We said goodbye to The White Stripes this week. We knew it was coming, knew their story arc was headed downward. We knew they were losing the youthful passion for playful enigma and offbeat humor. Even so, we couldn’t help but hope for one more album, one more hard charging concert or out of place appearance on Conan. But such is not to be.

I love The White Stripes for a couple of reasons. First, the music just rocks. Though they started out as mere garage-rock novelty, fans quickly realized that the stuff they were putting out was a significant cut above par. Jack’s fabulous guitar playing (he was named the 17th greatest guitar player of all time by Rolling Stone) and experimentation combined with Meg’s intriguingly amateurish drums to create sounds we did not know were possible, even for bands with more instruments to work with. Over time, Jack’s restless creativity evolved beyond (without losing its commitment to) the punk/blues beginnings to take on elements of country, celtic, and folk music. Further, they thought up all sorts of self-imposed limitations (such as ancient equipment, cheap instruments, and quick recording times) that made the music feel classic in the same way people enjoy listening to music on vinyl rather than CD. These things made every Stripes album fresh, exciting, thoughtful, and fun at the same time.

I also love them for their relentless promotion of their genre and interests. By staying committed to their own oddities and the elements that helped them stand out, they renewed a sense of authenticity in blues and rock as soulful rebellion- not so much in the sense of anger toward authority, but in rebelling against the pressure to be, um, normal.

Perhaps most important, though, I love The White Stripes for the way they have created, promoted, and preserved a strong sense of the value of mystery and legend. Throughout their story, Jack and Meg managed to stay in control of their message. They pretended to be brother and sister rather than (now ex) husband and wife. Jack wrote songs that spoke to deeply held emotions without ever revealing exactly what they meant or what life experiences drove them. They stayed cagey and elusive during interviews, including during the documentary Under Great White Northern Lights made about their Canadian tour. They controlled every aspect of their publicity, down to the music videos, editing of the documentary, and even the way they left the scene.

Of course, this approach had its annoyances and imperfections. Jack’s relentless self-promotion and Meg’s inability to express herself and let us identify with her could be off-putting, and the unanswered questions got frustrating at times. But all these actions kept questions and curiosity racing through our minds. They made us want more: more music, more information, more insight into the quirky, romantic, tragic lives of Jack and Meg. They made us want to know everything.

But when the answers didn’t come, we began to settle in; we accepted that there are things they just will not tell us, and things we will never know. We may never be told why they broke up the marriage early on but not the band, or what the relationship between Rita Hayworth and Meg is in Jack’s mind, or what Meg was thinking and feeling when she cried during Jack’s rendition of “White Moon” at the end of Northern Lights.

By their preservation of mystery, Jack and Meg have become more than enigmas to their fans; they have passed into the realm of legend and myth. They have caused us to value uncertainty as a rich and deep and beautiful part of both art and life, by showing us that withholding tell-all information has made us think harder, delve deeper into our own emotional lives, and ultimately love the music more.

It’s here that I think the Christian can most appreciate what The White Stripes have done. Christians (especially fans of, say, C.S. Lewis or George MacDonald) recognize that living with the mysteries of God is an inherent part of our lives, and sometimes that can be discouraging. A questioning and skeptical world wants to know everything about how sovereign grace works, or why God’s justice is so severe, or why worldly suffering cannot be lessened. We don’t know those answers perfectly. But bands like The White Stripes remind us that being okay with those tensions is rich and beautiful too, and help us see that sometimes we are better off not knowing. Sometimes withheld answers force us to work harder to understand, and that hard work is itself a joyful and important reward.

Some may mock Christians for not always knowing and yet loving and believing even so. Let them. Christianity has all the credibility and intelligence and thoughtfulness in the world, but at some point they are right: we don’t always know. For the last 13 plus years, Jack and Meg have been shining examples of why uncertainty is okay, why mystery be beautiful , and why we’re probably better off not always knowing.

Thanks so much, you two. We’ll miss you.

Avatar for Ben Bartlett

Ben Bartlett

Ben Bartlett is a business consultant, living and working in Louisville, Kentucky. He and his wife Samantha have three terrific kids. He loves reading, theology, politics, analysis, Ultimate Frisbee, and hiking. He also loves serving as an elder and teacher in his local church.

8 Comments

  1. Thought I’d make a quick note here as an unsashamed White Stripes promoter…

    If anyone is looking to get a sense of The White Stripes, here are ten songs I recommend to see their skill and diversity at work (not necessarily my ten favorites, but they’re all good).

    1. Seven Nation Army
    2. You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)
    3. Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn
    4. White Moon
    5. You Don’t Know What Love Is
    6. Icky Thump
    7. We’re Going to Be Friends
    8. Hotel Yorba
    9. Blue Orchid
    10. Rag and Bone

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  3. Interesting article. I almost regret having minimal familiarity with the White Stripes. I have two of their music videos (“Fell in Love with a Girl” and “Hardest Button to Button”) on a collection of of Michel Gondry videos and while I thought they were hip tunes, they weren’t enough to part me with fifteen bucks for a CD (to be fair, the song I’d buy is pretty rare these days). So I appreciate the starter pack you recommend.

    As to your content, I think it’s entirely appropriate that the first Related Article is one dealing with the LOST finale. Since the same need to accept and possibly even revel in mystery exists there. Unanswered questions are often the best questions because they sometimes teach us more than the answers would.

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  4. Thanks, Dane.

    The two songs you saw the videos for are both good ones I like, but they are also both much more in the hard rock vein of the band. I definitely recommend, at a minimum, listening to the free clips of the songs I listed on iTunes… I think you’ll see a much wider range and more, um, melodic content than you might expect.

    The area of unanswered questions is always difficult, because we want to avoid saying that belief without any justification at all is an inherent good… that simply promotes ignorance. But there definitely comes a point at which struggling with certain types of unanswered questions (with emphasis on being willing to struggle with those things or at least know that they are there) is healthy and enriching work even if the answers aren’t fully going to come.

    Lost has always been a problem for me in that category because I feel like the questions they “didn’t answer” had a lot more to do with being unable or unwilling to bring about a coherent world.

    The problem here is that you had characters with secular worldviews caught up in a world that was fantastically different than the one we now know (but was never fully explained), and then they “learned their lesson” that what was important was relationships… but really, what does that tell us? What reason is there to accept platitudes about the importance of relationships if little real motivation is given beyond the hypothetical existance of a random group purgatory in some fantasy world thought up by a couple of TV writers? Even though I primarily loved Lost for the relational content the whole way through, and was always disinterested in the fanboy science and geek stuff of it all, I found the conclusion to be extremely dissatisfying.

    I can’t articulate it perfectly, but in some sense I do want the answers that help me see and trust the value and structure of the world, without needing to know everything about the character of God or the details of some singer’s life.

    It’s a tough area, I’m definitely open to input on this one.

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  5. This is so interesting. I’ve been listening to a series of lectures on the writings and legacy of C. S. Lewis. I’ve always loved him so much, but have not read nearly everything he wrote. Listening to the series, I at first was stunned once again by his brilliance and apologetic reason, and then began to get frustrated as his reason seemed to be trying to explain every difficult question about God. Not only do I not think that is possible, but like you said, being able to rest in faith is one of the most important elements of the believer’s life. If we could know everything, what might that say about God? Or us?

    Especially in this day and age of knowing too much about everybody, it’s important to be able to be a fan and just not know all the details. Even though it can be frustrating. Great article!

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  7. Thanks Kristi!

    CS Lewis is one of my absolute favorites, and I think you might be surprised by just how comfortable he was with the mysteries of God. One terrific book to read is called “The Taste for the Other; The Social and Ethical Thought of CS Lewis,” by Gilbert Meilaender (another of my favorite authors). He does a wonderful job laying out how CS Lewis thought about the world and how you can see it in his writing, especially his two fictional series’.

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  8. I was sad to hear the White Stripes were no more. Hoped as you said for one more album. A powerful and innovative band, especially so in their straight-forward, stripped down blues rock sound. “Blue Orchid” would get my vote too as a great song of theirs. I should also mention that I once dreamed that the White Stripes were playing at my wedding…not the reception but the ceremony itself. As I walked to the front of the church they played “I just don’t know what to do with myself.” Don’t know what that means about my subconscious…

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