Get Behind Me Satan (2005)

Get Behind Me Satan is the fifth studio album by the American rock duo the White Stripes. It was released in June 2005, with V2 and Third Man handling distribution in the United States, and XL and Third Man handling international distribution. It was recorded in Jack White's home between February and March 2005, and Jack produced the whole album.

Described as the "most misunderstood entry in the White Stripes discography" by Jack White's own Third Man Records, Get Behind Me Satan musically diverts from the band's previous works with experimental production and lyrics that reference truth and actress Rita Hayworth. The album was promoted with early previews to journalists and releasing "Blue Orchid", "My Doorbell" and "The Denial Twist" as singles. It was not released in a vinyl format until 2015, as the band wanted to record a separate live version which never came to fruition. In the years following its release, Get Behind Me Satan has continued to be reissued.

Get Behind Me Satan charted within the top ten of nine countries, reaching number three on both the US Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart. The album received positive reviews from music critics, who praised its experimentation but some felt its production was too constricted. It received two nominations at the 2006 Grammy Awards, winning Best Alternative Album.

Background and recording

Get Behind Me Satan was conceived at a time when the White Stripes had felt "betrayed" and "burned" by close friends within the Detroit music scene such as Jason Stollsteimer, a member of the Von Bondies, which Jack White had got into a physical altercation with in December 2003, and Jim Diamond, who had filed a lawsuit against the band in October 2004, wanting royalties of their first two albums. As well as these confrontations, "friendships and relationships were breaking up," and Jack felt he "didn't want to get up and go to work." In the hindsight of 2006, Jack acknowledged that his own constitution had more to do with why he could no longer live in Detroit and that moving sooner likely would not have made a difference, as Get Behind Me Satan was "a farewell to a lot of the parts of my personality that I didn't want to see anymore," more so than it was a farewell to Detroit. Jack described Get Behind Me Satan as "the absolute breaking point of the idea of home" which has been a recurring motif in his lyrics and his "[...] supposed, constructed new home was also shattering." With success and constant touring, Jack found it hard to stay connected to Detroit as his home and frequently performed "Boll Weevil" during concerts for this reason. He did not initially want to leave the city until he began to feel like a pariah. Yet he did regret doing so much to support other local artists and constantly self-effacing to assuage them, feeling he "should have been more concerned with [himself]," as well as realizing that it was foolish to turn down millions of dollars worth of opportunities earlier in their career. Meg also left Detroit at the same time, leaving behind "so much baggage," though clarified that the duo are "not anti-Detroit" as an entire city. Their former friends in the Detroit rock scene made feel that they had to atone for and feel guilty about their success, of which no one could relate to, until they felt exiled–with Jack saying he sensed the voice of God telling him to leave the city. Get Behind Me Satan as well as its tour was their way of "coping" with the alienation. In 2004, when asked how his fight would become a chapter of the White Stripes' saga, Jack invoked Johnny Cash's colorful past as an outlaw and said, "if Jimmy Page had robbed a bank, I'm not gonna throw my Led Zeppelin record away," in that people were just looking for reasons to "tear [others] down." In a 2018 Rolling Stone interview that began with a retrospective on what occurred with Stollsteimer, Jack expressed a similar sentiment and no remorse for the physical altercation, saying the likes of Cash, Sid Vicious, and Jerry Lee Lewis (or even comedian Jerry Lewis) have had similar transgressions and that his anger was a justified, human reaction in that moment.