Features The White Stripes: The Baseline Of Cool?

The White Stripes always meant the alternative world growing up - something outside of the flat-ironed pretty girl world, or the moody, black-wearing emo world that I had to choose from.

They were the tape that my best friend (with the dyed hair and piercings) made for me when I went to get my first tattoo. Playing in the car on the way to New Jersey, where I got a tiny tattoo on my foot, the needle burning into my skin in a way that meant permanence to me. All the while ‘Seven Nation Army’ was thumping away in my head.

From that moment, The White Stripes became associated with fun, excitement, and doing exactly what you want without caring what others thought.

They accompanied me to college where I listened to them as I unpacked, terrified of leaving home and missing my parents, even though they were only on a Target run. At college, they became a signifier. Did you want to sing ‘In The Cold, Cold Night’ to the boy you had a crush on? Did you have not just ‘Elephant’, but the self-titled?

By being able to talk freely in the discography and bizarrely supposedly incestuous relationship they had, you could be deemed cool. But of course, it being Bard College, land of the original hipster, it was the baseline of cool. If you wanted to be really cool, you had to move on from there.

The White Stripes were the starting point. They became the basis for playlists and mixtapes. Always adding a feeling of hillbilly punk rock, a sound that was at the same time completely melodic and not at the same time.

No matter what their incarnation, that feeling of driving with the windows open while playing any of their songs will always equal the sun beating down on your arm sticking out the window as the wind blows your hair and your friends do ridiculous things and sing along.