It’s easy to make fun of Jack White, you know, the sophisticated attire, the funny lunatic stunts he does (i.e. the balloons carrying his records), the lies (Meg wasn’t his sister!), the mannerisms and the pretentiousness, and @Discographies, who did this before for other famous musicians, made this analysis of Jack White. If you can’t read it, this is the break down with the explanations!
15% Arcane, dandified Wes Andersonian quaintness
[“I think I have too many interests. I mean, people will come to my house and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you collected scissors, Jack.’”]
13% Non-Hawaiian-shirted caucasian blues-rock revisionism
13% Colonial Williamsburg-ish living-history-museum docentism
11% Theda Bara (a silent film actress who used to play femme fatale/vamp roles)
10% Authentic inauthenticity
[“The quote unquote ‘Real Jack White’ has always been there, only if the viewer, the listener, can get past all the stuff that shouldn’t bother them to begin with.”]
10% Unreliable narration
[“Art is the biggest fabrication…I mean, I don’t want to see a regular guy walk out on stage. Fuck that! Imagine how disappointed you’d be if Michelangelo was just a normal guy. I don’t want to know that. Do you?”]
10% Evasive dissembling
[“Nobody knows, I don’t know, the band doesn’t know, the fans don’t know, the press don’t know, nobody knows what’s going to happen.”]
7% Wonka-esque glow-in-the-dark, liquid-filled, laser-etched, peach-scented and balloon-delivered records
[“What some people call a gimmick, others will call art.”]
5% Hyphephilia (Paraphilic condition in which sexuoerotic arousal is dependent on touching or rubbing a human or non human object, or the feel of skin, hair, leather. fur, or fabrics (like velvet).
[We did a record with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and I asked her about the settee she always sits on — that famous couch. I said, “Man, I’d really, really love to upholster that thing for you.”]
3% Jay-Z envy
[“I’m jealous of things that Jay-Z can say that I can’t say…Jay-Z can go on record and say what a great rapper he is. If I go on record and say what a great guitar player I am…come on!”]
2% “Setting Limits With Your Strong-Willed Child” by Robert J. Mackenzie
[“’[Sixteen] Saltines’ came from my daughter. I was working on a song and she asked me for a snack. I said, ‘What do you want’ and she said, ‘I think I’ll have 16 saltine crackers. I said, ‘I think you’ll have three!’”]
1% Cyan, magenta, yellow and black
All this sounds funny although I don’t know whether Jack White lives in a Wes Anderson or David Lynch’s movie (the erotic velvet thing), or whether he is really jealous of Jay-Z, but there is something about this ‘authentic inauthenticity’ thing which sticks to White.