SEVEN NATION ARMY THE CURRENT GENERATIONS SMOKE ON THE WATER?
How Jack White’s “little experiment” went through the roof.
The last big year for rock super-hits, i.e. the kind that still mean something to non-music fans, was arguably 2003. There was The Darkness’s I Believe In A Thing Called Love, Foo Fighters’ Times Likes These and Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life, among others. But none of them took hold as fiercely, and certainly none of them have remained as ingrained in the global subconscious, as The White Stripes’ bare-bones blues earworm Seven Nation Army. It might not have reached as many No.1 chart spots as other rock songs that year, but its cultural impact has resonated powerfully ever since. To all intents and purposes it’s the young generation’s Smoke On The Water: simple enough to play, and infectious enough to be remembered, hummed and chanted by just about everyone. Its minimal yet commanding riff (the product of White’s experiment in creating a “compelling song that did not include a chorus”) is chanted by sports crowds the world over. It’s been featured in numerous videogames and TV series. It’s been played by Metallica, Audioslave, Pearl Jam and KT Tunstall, to name a few. Following a speech by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the Wirral Live music festival in 2017, the audience began to chant “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” to the tune of its riff; a chant that resurfaced at other major events including Glastonbury. And, perhaps most tellingly, for children picking up a guitar for the first time (too young even to remember The White Stripes), Seven Nation Army is one of the first things they’re likely to learn. Not bad for a song White had assumed would be “just a little experiment that not many people would care about”.