“Seven Nation Army” is the first track on the album Elephant by American alternative rock band The White Stripes. It was released as a single in 2003 and is arguably the band’s best-known song. “Seven Nation Army” reached #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks for three weeks and won 2004’s Grammy Award for Best Rock Song. It also became 3rd best performing alternative song of the decade on the same chart. The song is known for its underlying riff, which plays throughout most of the song. Although it sounds like a bass guitar (an instrument the group had never previously used), the sound is actually created by running Jack White’s semi-acoustic guitar (a 1950s style Kay Hollowbody) through a DigiTech Whammy pedal set down an octave.
The song deals with The White Stripes’ rising popularity and the negatives that came with it. After White came up with the riff, he devised a storyline in which a protagonist comes into town and all his friends are gossiping about him. “He feels so bad he has to leave town, but you get so lonely you come back,” said White. “The song’s about gossip. It’s about me, Meg and the people we’re dating.”
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