White Blood Cells is the third studio album by American rock duo the White Stripes, independently released by the Sympathy for the Record Industry on July 3, 2001. It was produced by guitarist and lead vocalist Jack White. The band departed from their blues rock roots and shifted to a garage rock sound, while Jack wrote lyrics about love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia. Its name and cover art reference their disillusionment with fame and the mainstream music industry.
Following their success within the Detroit music scene, the White Stripes began to shift from their blues-inspired roots. White Blood Cells was recorded at Easley-McCain Recording in Tennessee over three days and was their first work to be mastered in a studio. The process cost and was rushed in order to capture a "real tense feeling" and the band's energy. The band promoted the album with a trio of shows in Detroit and three singles: "Hotel Yorba", "Fell in Love with a Girl" and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground".
White Blood Cells entered the charts of nine countries, reaching number 61 on the US Billboard 200 and number 55 on the UK Albums Chart. It was their first work to sell a million copies, earning platinum certifications in the United States and United Kingdom. The album was acclaimed by critics and propelled Jack and Meg White to the forefront of the 2000s indie and garage rock movements. Since its release, it has been widely cited by critics as one of the best albums of all time.
The White Stripes previously sought success in the Detroit music scene, releasing two albums between 1999 and 2000. In the interim, bandmates Jack and Meg White divorced; however Meg insisted that they continue working together.
After rehearsing for a week, The White Stripes recorded White Blood Cells over three days in February 2001, at Easley-McCain Recording in Memphis, Tennessee. It was the band's first time recording, mixing and mastering their music in a 24-track recording studio, and Jack asked recording engineer Stuart Sikes more than once "not to make it sound too good." According to Sikes, in order to save money, the first 12 tracks of the tape were used for one song, while on the remaining 12 tracks, another song would be recorded. Meg was initially hesitant about rushing the recording process, believing the songs were "too new" and required more practice. Rushing the record, however, was done in order to keep the album "as unorganized as possible" and get "a real tense" feeling. The production of the album cost about and was recorded in about 3 days.
The name White Blood Cells was chosen as "this idea of bacteria coming at us, or just foreign things coming at us, or media, or attention on the band". Its cover art depicts Jack and Meg surrounded by people wielding television and video cameras, which was intended to both comment and satirize on the music industry. Jack said in a 2001 interview: "When does music become a business and why do we have to be suckered into it? Why do we have to buy a cell phone, you know what I mean? A lot of that stuff upsets me. It gets annoying." The album was dedicated to Loretta Lynn, creating a friendship between Lynn and the band; Jack later produced Lynn's 2004 album Van Lear Rose.
Continuing the stripped-down garage rock nature of the White Stripes, White Blood Cells features less of the band's blues rock influences, instead displaying a more raw, basic, and primitive rock and roll sound. Shortly before the release of White Blood Cells, Jack asserted that "There's no blues on the new record. We're taking a break from that. There's no slide work, bass, guitar solos, or cover songs. It's just me and Meg, guitar, drums and piano." All material on White Blood Cells is original, and is one of two White Stripes albums to not feature any covers.
The lyrics in White Blood Cells explore love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia, brought on by the increasing media attention the duo began receiving. Some of the songs were written in the band's early years, or inspired by other side-projects of Jack. Jack said being able to utilize his older works was "cool because a lot of things had been sitting around for a long time, stuff I had written on piano that had been just sitting around not doing anything. And it was good to put them all together at once, put them all in the same box and see what happened."
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" was written by Jack and first performed by the White Stripes on a local radio show in early 1999. It was recorded for their debut album, but Jack didn't feel it was ready until the production of White Blood Cells. "Hotel Yorba" is based on the former hotel of the same name, which was a couple of blocks from Jack's childhood home. It was inspired by a rumor Jack had loved about the Beatles staying there. Critics perceived "I'm Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman" to be about the dissolution of the romantic relationship between Jack and Meg, who divorced over a year before the release of the album. They also perceived Jack as lyrically embodying the archaic gender roles of men in the 1930s Deep South, though Jack insisted he disagreed with their depraved behavior.
"Fell in Love with a Girl" became the band's breakthrough to the mainstream, bolstered by its Lego-animation music video by Michel Gondry, "Expecting" depicts a relationship in which a woman is never satisfied with him and expects more and more of him. It makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to Toledo, Ohio, about an hour away from Detroit. The song concludes with Meg seemingly asking a favor. "Little Room" has been described as an "homily", written in response to Jack's favorite song, "Grinnin' in Your Face" by Son House. It is the third of the six songs in the White Stripes discography to feature the word "little" in its title.
"The Union Forever" was written years prior when Jack was in another band, though the White Stripes didn't start performing it until Meg's nascent drumming skills began to develop. It contains allusions to Citizen Kane (1941), Jack's favorite film, and nearly every line in the song comes from the movie; Warner Bros. was once rumored to be suing the band over copyright infringement for Citizen Kane. "The Same Boy You've Always Known" is a rock ballad. In an interview with broadcast journalist Dan Rather, Jack chose the song as the one that he'd like to be played at his memorial.
"We're Going to Be Friends" is about two innocent children who befriend each other on the first day of school and makes an allusion to "Suzy Lee" from their first album. It was the first White Stripes song to be used in film, appearing in Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Though only released as a promotional recording in 2002, it became one of the band's most popular songs and has been compared to the work of the Beatles. The music video was recorded in one take after the filming of the "Hotel Yorba" music video earlier in the day, as Kevin Carrico (who was also the director of photography on the "Hotel Yorba" music video) had some extra film available. It depicts Jack playing the song while Meg, whose drums are not featured on the song, sleeps on a couch that they had planned to discard. It was the last song they ever performed live in 2009.
Two consecutive tracks described by Stylus Magazines Andrew Unterberger as engaging filler, "I Think I Smell a Rat" was built upon another, unreleased song called "That's Where It's At", while "Aluminum" is a heavy metal instrumental that features Jack and Meg screaming wordlessly over a sludgey guitar riff inspired by early Nirvana. "Offend in Every Way", "This Protector", "Now Mary", and "I Can Learn" were written years prior to the album; some were even written before their debut record. The band expressed regret over putting "I Can't Wait" on the album, as the final product didn't meet their expectations.
Three weeks before the release of the album, the White Stripes performed three well-received shows in Detroit at the Gold Dollar, the Magic Bag, and the Magic Stick. Twice released on July 3, 2001 by Sympathy and in 2002 by V2, White Blood Cells was the band's first mainstream success. The album entered the UK Albums Chart on August 18, 2001, peaking at 55 and spending 39 weeks on the chart. It debuted on the Billboard 200 at 185 on March 23, 2002, remaining on the charts for 53 weeks and peaking at 61 on April 20, 2002. It went on to receive platinum certifications in the United Kingdom and the United States, and gold certifications in Australia and Canada.
White Blood Cells received widespread acclaim. Review aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized score of 86 out of 100 based on 16 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". This makes White Blood Cells the White Stripes' second highest-scoring album on the website as of 2024. It drew praise in the United Kingdom on its initial release, and after its reissue by V2, was acclaimed in the United States; outlets of both territories praised the band's "back to basics" approach. AllMusic editor Heather Phares wrote, "Jack and Meg White's third effort for Sympathy for the Record Industry wraps their powerful, deceptively simple style around meditations on fame, love, and betrayal... it's precisely this mix of strength and sweetness, among other contrasts, that makes the White Stripes so intriguing. Likewise, White Blood Cells<nowiki/>' ability to surprise old fans and win over new ones makes it one of the Stripes' finest albums."
Writers at NME said "This is the house of the Rising Stars: the lyrics are great, the attitude unmistakable. [...] Great songs, a great look and self-discipline, too. Rock'n'roll might have been the ruin of many a poor boy, but White Stripes are made guys." Dan Killan and Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork said that "Jack and Meg White summon the Holy Spirit and channel it through 16 perfectly concise songs of longing, with dirty, distorted electric guitar cranked to maximum amplification, crashing, bruised drums, and little else. They don't innovate rock; they embody it." Rolling Stone said that, on White Blood Cells, "Jack's Delta-roadhouse fantasies, Detroit-garage-rock razzle and busted-love lyricism, as well as Meg's toy-thunder drumming all peaked at once." Joe Hagan of The New York Times declared that the White Stripes "have made rock rock again by returning to its origins as a simple, primitive sound full of unfettered zeal."
White Blood Cells was included on many "best of 2001" year-end lists, including Blender, Rolling Stone, Mojo, and Kerrang!s top 20, and NME, Pitchfork, and The Village Voice<nowiki/>'s top 10. It also earned the band their first accolades, including three awards at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards and nominations at the 2002 MTV Europe Music Awards, the 2002 MuchMusic Video Awards, and the 2002 Shockwaves NME Awards.
White Blood Cells propelled the band to the forefront of the 2000s indie rock revival and garage rock revival, and is considered a defining album of the period. Retrospectively, it has been cited as one of the band's best works, and among the best albums of all time. Jon Lusk of BBC believed the album solidified their success thanks to "the crunching, insistent simplicity of Meg White's drumming, which sticks like glue to Jack White's intense, rhythmic, blues-based riffing; a broad, knowing sense of pop history, and of course their by now well-established red/white branding imagery." Paul Travers of Louder called it "one of the first great albums of the 21st century" and their best album.
By the end of the 2000s, it was ranked as the best album of the decade by The A.V. Club and Uncut. Billboard, Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork featured the album within the top 20 of their respective lists, and Consequence of Sound, The Daily Californian, Glide, and Under the Radar featured the album within the top 30 of their respective lists. It also appeared on Spin's lists of the "Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years" and the "125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years" in 2005 and 2010, respectively. It appeared on The Guardian "1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die" list and ranked it number 178 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "200 Definitive Albums" list, both in 2007. Uncut ranked it first on their list of "The 150 Greatest Albums Of The 21st Century So Far" in 2009. Slant Magazine ranked it number 68 on their list of the "Top 250 Albums of the 2000s" in 2010. Rolling Stone ranked it number 497 on their "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2012. NME ranked it number 77 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2013.
Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonald created an online-only art project, titled Redd Blood Cells, in which he added a bass track to the otherwise bass-less album. The White Stripes arranged with Steven to take the files down after more than 60,000 downloads. British choreographer Wayne McGregor used the track "Aluminum"âÂÂamong other of the band's songsâÂÂfor his production Chroma, a piece he created for the Royal Ballet in London, England. It was played to the band as a surprise in Cincinnati Music Hall, Ohio in 2006, and won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. In addition, the song "We're Going to Be Friends" has appeared in the films Napoleon Dynamite, Wonder, and Mr. Harrigan's Phone, and "Fell in Love with a Girl" was featured in the Oscar-winning film Silver Linings Playbook. In 2018, English rock band Arctic Monkeys performed "The Union Forever" at a Detroit concert.
All lyrics written by Jack White, except where noted; all music is composed by Jack and Meg White. The Japanese edition features "Jolene" and "Hand Springs" as bonus tracks, both of which were recorded at different points in 1999.
For the 20th anniversary of the album, Third Man Records released White Blood Cells XX in April 2021, which is a reissue including home demos, early studio mixes, alternate takes, and a live show from September 6, 2001, at Headliner's in Louisville, Kentucky.
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.
The White Stripes
Production
Artwork