Get ready for a cheesy “I was driving home the other day and it hit me” story. Ready? Okay.
I was driving home the other day and it hit me: “Seven Nation Army” is a great fucking song.
Don’t pass this off as a weightless observation. In my dumb head, “great fucking song” is the most elite status a tune can achieve. It means a song is now a member of my personal music hall of fame. And until a few days ago “Seven Nation Army” wasn’t a member.
So how did it get inducted? What changed? Why did a White Stripes song from 2003, popular though it was, suddenly vault itself into “great fucking song” territory one random, hung-over Sunday morning in October, 2011?
I don’t know.
(Wouldn’t it be funny if I just ended the article right there?)
Okay, I do know how it happened. But the strange thing is, it wasn’t Meg and Jack who made me fall in love with their song all over again.
It was Audioslave.
On this particular morning, a local alternative rock radio station was playing nothing but live concert performances. Initially, when the female disc jockey intro’d the Chris Cornell-led cover, I wasn’t intrigued. I hadn’t listened to Audioslave on purpose since college, and quite frankly I had heard “Seven Nation Army” so much I’d grown tired of it. Sure, I loved it as much as everyone else when it was first released, and I still remember being unable to blink the first time I watched the hypnotizing music video. But ultimately, the song suffered from overplay – both at my own hand and others. It certainly didn’t help that soccer fans around the world had adopted the familiar “buuuuum ba dumdum ba duuuuuum duuuum” riff as a stadium-wide chant. (I hate soccer.)
Nonetheless, I gave it a chance.
Four minutes later, their performance had restored in me the passion of “Seven Nation Army” that had been lost. The thumping bass drum was like a giant finger poking me in the chest, bullying me into a desire to apologize to Mr. and Mrs. White for ever dismissing their song. Chris Cornell’s all-out vocals brought back meaning to one of my favorite lines of all time: “I’m going to Wichita/Far from the opera forever more.” Even the extra embellishments by drummer Brad Wilk and (especially) guitarist Tom Morello added something to my appreciation of the song; it was as if they were saying, “God, I wish I had come up with this jam.”
You ain’t alone, fellas.
About midway through the song I realized I was experiencing one of those moments in one’s book of life when you slide the yellow highlighter across the page. It was when I realized there’s a reason why we listened to “Seven Nation Army” so much when it came out. Why the music video hypnotized us. Why hooligans chant it at soccer games. Why Audioslave (and Kelly Clarkson) covered it. Why it will one day define an entire decade. Why you want to listen to it right now.
The reason? Simple. It’s a great fucking song.
If you haven’t heard it in a while, give it another listen. Make sure the volume’s loud. And if you haven’t heard the Audioslave cover, look it up on YouTube. Again, on full volume.
For whatever reason, it took another band’s version of the song to truly make me appreciate what Meg and Jack pulled off. It’s a simple song, sure, but God damn is it powerful. It’s a song that The White Stripes will be remembered for and one that will be covered many times over. It’s the newest member of my personal music hall of fame, and it will likely be inducted into yours, as well.
“And everyone knows about it/From the Queen of England to the hounds of Hell.”
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