On Sunday, The Guardian published an interview with Jack White pegged to the release of his new book Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, which contains lyrics to every song he’s written outside of The White Stripes, poems, scans from his notebooks and even a few Instagram posts. While much of the interview touches on the common themes that crop up in White’s work, one quote in particular about what his songs are not has caught the attention of music fans.
After being asked if any of his songs are entirely autobiographical, White said “[n]ot too much” and went on to explain why. “Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
“Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song,” he continued. “If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
First off, it’s ridiculous to argue that pulling inspiration directly from one’s own life when writing music is “boring.” Taylor Swift usually gets tossed around as an example whenever this topic pops up, but she doesn’t deserve to be the poster child for writing about one’s exes. Artists have been writing about their breakups — or their undying loves, or their struggles getting sober, or their weird relationships with their mothers, or any other aspect of their personal lives — for as long as human beings have been making music. You can say it’s not your cup of tea, but you can’t tell me ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus writing “The Winner Takes It All” about his divorce from bandmate Agnetha Fältskog and then having her sing lead on it is boring.
The entirety of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours? Also not boring. The list of classic songs or albums inspired by personal heartbreak is far too long to keep rattling off here — but are we really going to try and say Paul McCartney shouldn’t have written “Maybe I’m Amazed” about his wife Linda? The fact that Swift keeps getting held up as the sole songwriter who frequently writes about her personal life feels pretty unfair. (Swift herself has spoken out about this in the past, saying, “I think, frankly, that’s a very sexist angle to take. No one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says it about Bruno Mars. They’re all writing songs about their exes, their current girlfriends, their love life, and no one raises a red flag there.”)
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“Well, when Dylan said the answer was blowing in the wind he didn’t tell you what the answer was,” he said. “I think a lot of people in the protest days were torn: you want to make a statement but the speaker can be chewed up and spat out. The search for hypocrisy becomes intense once somebody takes the podium and condemns somebody else. When it comes to the president, I know a lot about it so I feel comfortable saying it. But if I were to put it in artistic form, I don’t think I would say those things directly. I wouldn’t say the names. I would make up a character.”
Part of the reason why White has had such a successful career — besides his raw talent — is the fact that he’s always had an extremely well-defined oeuvre. He’s always known exactly what his songs are and what they aren’t, and he deserves kudos for understanding that his perspective may not be the most relatable.
The important part of his Taylor Swift comment that seems to be getting ignored is that he said autobiographical songs are “boring for me.” It’s maybe not the right approach for him when he’s writing, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for other artists. If several hundred years of popular music have proven anything, it’s that there’s no single correct way to write a song. If there were, music would be a lot more monolithic — and what’s more boring than that?
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