Jack White is releasing two new albums this year–the more hard-rockin’ Fear of Dawn and the more acoustic set Entering Heaven Alive. Based strictly on their lead singles, they’re probably fine. But, I mean, that’s all his solo albums have ever been: Fine. Not bad. But nothing memorable, either. (Unless you count Boarding House Reach, which really was just straight-up bad.) They remain the sorts of songs that, even at their best, you kinda have to talk yourself into liking.^[1]And the fact that White, a loud-and-proud Luddite, licensed one of these tracks to a Call of Duty game, kinda betrays his lack of confidence in these songs as well.

The problem for a solid decade now has been that, despite White’s sincerest efforts, his solo albums have just never felt as vital–both in the sense of feeling necessary and of feeling alive–as any given White Stripes track. I was recently reminded of this fact when I finally gave the 2020 White Stripes Greatest Hits collection a cursory stream (I already owned all 6 of their albums from their 2000s heyday, so why would I bother with a greatest hits?), only to be immediately reminded how effortlessly innovative and fun—like a breath of fresh air—the Stripes always sounded, even in truncated form. This in turn reminded me why I was always vaguely disappointed in Jack White’s solo career; I knew he could do better.

To follow Jack White’s post-Stripes career is similar to being a post-’90s Weezer fan—it’s to be constantly grasping at straws, sifting for wheat among the chaff, trying desperately to remind yourself of why you were ever a fan in the first place. It’s to groove along to the title track of 2014’s Lazaretto, all while trying to ignore how cringe “Entitlement” is, or how much “Want and Able” suffers in comparison to “Effect and Cause.”

It’s to try and appreciate the White Stripes-esque “Sixteen Saltines” from 2012’s Blunderbuss, all while unable to shake the feeling that the track sounded more like Jack White performing in the style of the White Stripes than an actual White Stripes song^[2]and it’s to see that Jezebel once included Blunderbuss on its sarcastic list of “150 Worst Albums by Men,” and go, “Hey!…actually, that’s fair”.

It’s to note that even the weakest White Stripes tracks on 2016’s career-spanning Acoustic Recordings—yes, even the previously-unreleased throwaway from the Get Behind Me Satan sessions—still sound stronger than his best solo material.

It’s to actively ignore Boarding House Reach entirely.

After a solid decade of these sorts of releases–a period longer now than the White Stripes were ever together–the only real revelation about Jack White’s solo career is how profoundly crucial Meg White had been all along.

It was always easy to dismiss her as a gimmick you see–a gimmick that maybe hooked you onto some fun new music, sure, but still a gimmick nonetheless.  Seriously, a two-piece retro garage-rock outfit in a red/white color scheme composed of a brother/sister duo that turned out to be a divorced couple somehow still friends?  That was always gonna be an entertaining premise for a band, even without hearing their albums.  Come for the weirdo couple, stay for the actual songs, seemed to be the thinking.

But then as the White Stripes, against all odds, began to flirt with actual mainstream success, as their singles received real radio airplay, as “Seven Nation Army” joined the rarefied ranks of “We Are The Champions” and “(Whoop!) There It Is” as songs we will hear in every sports stadium till the end of time, Meg began to seem like a sort of prehensile tail, a left-over vestige of an earlier Indie era when Jack White still needed a hook to set himself apart.  The fact that, after hitting it big, Jack promptly formed The Ranconteurs and Dead Weather–“side-projects” that were more fleshed-out and professional than his main gig–did little to ameliorate murmurings that Meg, with her childishly simple drumming, was in fact holding back Jack the “musical genius.”

Not that Jack ever verbally expressed so–quite the inverse in fact: even at their height he was always very vocal about the great and essential importance Meg had on the band’s sound.  But then, Jack is also a incorrigible showman, one who tries on as many identities as he does musical styles, so it was easy to just dismiss Jack’s praise of Meg as more performance art, that he was still just milking the gimmick for all it’s worth, that he was in fact only being gracious and generous to his mild-mannered bandmate while he dominated the spotlight.  And in fact, given how often Jack has consciously created limitations and obstacles for himself to overcome…

…so as to really force himself to wrestle the instrument and make better music, well, it was never hard to conclude that Meg was likewise another self-imposed limitation on Jack, another obstacle for Jack to overcome–and one he could easily do without. But 11 years after the band’s official break up and 5 solo albums later, it’s now clear that Jack White wasn’t just being modest when he insisted upon Meg’s vital importance–no, she was in fact essential to the band’s sound.  

Again, to be clear: Meg was, at best, a very amateurish (if primal) drummer; she had no vocal chops and was not the song writer; nevertheless, she was also clearly not just another self-imposed obstacle for Jack to wrestle against and overcome, no–there was something about her ambiance, her aloofness, her personality, and her chemistry with Jack White that grounded him and enabled him to make the music he did. The White Stripes were not a gimmick, but an actual complete band, it turns out.   Meg would likely never even have made it as some no-name, journeyman drummer without Jack, but Jack would never have made as good of music without Meg!  She was not the hanger-on to Jack’s “genius” or whatever, she really was vital.  Jack was right.

There is of course a larger moral here: never discount the contributions of those around you, no matter how much less “talented” or “skilled” you may perceive them to be.  Never assume that you are “self-made,” or that you “never got help from anyone,” or that you ever accomplished anything “all by yourself” and that “others are leaching off your genius” and other such poisonous rationalizations that soothe the conscious of the rich as they grind on the faces of the poor–for you never completely know who all has helped and enabled you along the way. 

Jack White at least had the self-awareness and decency once upon a time to acknowledge what Meg White did for him while they were together; may the rest of us learn to be likewise gracious–not condescendingly, not patronizingly, but sincerely, soberly, and truthfully.

And now to bring it all back home to the gospel that is the ostensible theme of this site: This interdependence, perhaps not incidentally, is why Mosiah 18:8-10 declares that it is a part of our baptismal covenants to “mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort,” and especially to “bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light”–and that, again, not condescendingly, not patronizingly, but with a very real sense of our irrevocable interdependence, and of how that reliance on each other not only sustains us, but is what makes us feel alive.

It is the same logic as the United Order, the Law of Consecration, 4 Nephi 1:3 and Acts 2:44-45 (not to mention Mosiah 18:27-28). The Atonement brings us life because it brings us together–At-One, in a reconciliation–while death pulls us apart. The Atonement doesn’t just save our lives, but enlivens us, too.

As Henry B. Eyering once said, anytime you have felt the Holy Spirit, you have felt the Atonement of Jesus Christ working in your life; or as the White Stripes once sang, “You know why you love at all if you’re thinking of the Holy Ghost…”