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they're obviously born out of a love of that kind of music, but yeh it is hard to become completely attached to a band that are so clearly throwbacks. And they do have some fantastic songs.

but they're quite good and I don't think they're at all hollow and calculated.

but prolly don't quite ever love them, feel I missed out on them live really though where I guessed they were at their best

I tend to skip them when they pop up on shuffle these days but at the time I liked them a lot. They were genuinely great live.

...the rest I can comfortably leave alone.

granted, Jack tells things from his point of view but it does flesh out a lot of what made the Stripes so good (as well as Zeppelin and U2). They were my favorite band for a few years because I was just starting out as a musician myself and wanted something raw, less over-produced, something I could identify with. White Blood Cells remains one of my favorite albums of all time.

to describe them as 'hollow and calculated' seems oddly ignorant from someone with such taste and knowledge.

i would say that they remain one of my favourite bands.

simply put, Jack White is a phenomenal musician, capable of writing great records, all with a keen eye for aesthetics. he's got a cool 'sister' as well.

i don't do hype. i don't do backlashes. two things that seem to be very popular round these parts.

Hollow and calculated? Seriously? Calculated to achieve what exactly? This kind of suggests that everyone was just sitting around in 2001 thinking that what the world needed more than anything else was a boy/girl blues throwback band. Hardly a gambit that on paper would have looked set to get them the success they obtained. In theory they should have remained an anachronism that never made it much further than the Detroit city limits, but luckily for them Jack White is an amazingly gifted songwriter. Is it really that hard to imagine them being someone's favorite band?

I really enjoyed his solo album, possibly more than any White Stripes I've heard, the inverse Jack White law holds true (the more people in a band with Jack White the worse the band)

They were brilliant. I loved the first 3 albums for a while there. The end.

(though may have stopped short of using "hollow and calculated"). It just seems their narrative exists outside the music, as if the idea for the band and their whole ethos came before the albums themselves. That isn't to say they don't have some great songs, but they're just good pastiches.

They were integral to my awakening, when I realized that there is so, so much more out there than Top 40 garbage. I feel like my life is divided into two parts: the part BEFORE White Stripes, and the part AFTER them.

I saw Jack White play twice last year. Two absolutely incredible shows. He did a lot of the same songs at both dates, but they were all arranged so much differently both times. "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" being the best example: first time was a straightforward jam, but the second time was incredibly reserved, with a spotlight only on him and his guitar, and his piano player (who, it is worth mentioning, is Ikey Owens). It shed a completely different light on the song, and it was splendid.

That band is one that made songs that only sounded like that band. One of the few bands where, if I didn't KNOW the song was a White Stripes song, I knew because of that sound. I love that about them. Always imitated, but never quite replicated.

So, yeah. I love White Stripes.

but lost interest with Elephant which was piss-poor. And when they did that Coke ad...go fuck yourselves.

But it was obvious how their records got worse after they made it "big". Then JW moved to Nashville (I'm from Detroit, and how he abandoned the city still stings) - but anyway, it was what it was & for a time it was pretty damn cool. But I don't wear carpenter jeans anymore either. So that's that, then.