Icky Thump by The White Stripes

The White Stripes’ 2007 album Icky Thump marked a few changes in Jack White’s life: he’d gotten married and left Detroit for Nashville. He’d just come off a tour with The White Stripes, which put him in a serious guitar-slinging mood. This was also the first White Stripes album recorded in a fully-equipped modern studio, though White’s main guitar was still the cheapo Montgomery Ward Airline guitar he’d been playing all along.

“Icky Thump” ranks as one of the band’s most political songs, though White saw the lyric as a question of who was using who. He first decided to write about someone wanting to go to a strip club or hire a prostitute, which led him to the idea of someone crossing the Mexican border to do so. This led to his addressing the illegal immigration issue, which he saw as creating hypocrisy when people wanted immigrants to do cheap labor and get kicked out of the country afterward.

Jack White played Elvis in the music-film sendup Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

This is a tough one vocally as the tune jumps all over the place, with some talky parts thrown in. Do your best to keep up.

On guitar the tempo is not steady for the chorus riff, so be careful to follow the gems carefully when they aren’t on the beat. Also, the parts authored to the organ are extremely difficult, so save Overdrive for the very-easy-to-fail second and third organ solos.

White spent most of 2009 working with The Dead Weather. During 2009 The White Stripes hit movie screens twice, with Jack White being featured in It Might Get Loud and the group’s last Canadian tour documented in The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights.