Recommendations of the Editorial team
Jack White released a statement on Instagram Monday evening after numerous media outlets commented on his statements in an interview with the Guardian taken out of context. When discussing poetry and songwriting, White mentioned fellow musician Taylor Swift and her style of writing – and explained his own approach to storytelling in music. Online portals however, framed his words as criticism of the “Tortured Poets” artist, particularly through headlines that quickly spread online.
“I’ll put this up for a day and then take it down again just to bury the matter,” White wrote in the now-deleted post. “I didn’t say that I find Taylor Swift’s music ‘boring’ or whatever clickbait the internet is trying to scrape together. What I wanted to say in an interview about poetry and poetry was that it’s not at all interesting for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyrics and poems – because it might be repetitive for ME to always write about myself, and because it might be uninteresting for the people who listen to my music to do that Imaginary characters are simply more attractive to me as an author.”
White also acknowledged the “tremendous success” of Swift and other songwriters who have their own process, emphasizing that just “because I say I have a certain way of working doesn’t mean I think EVERYONE should do it the same way.” He added: “They should do what works for them. And that’s what they’re doing, and it obviously appeals to a lot of people and I’m glad to hear that.”
The original quote in the “Guardian”
On the question of Guardian In an article published on Sunday about whether any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White replied: “Not really. It’s become very popular now to be Taylor Swift-style pop singers who write about all their public breakups – I don’t find that interesting at all. I find it a bit boring to write about myself.”
White continued: “Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I’ve already had it – I don’t have to relive it every time I sing this song. If something is really painful, I’m not going to throw that important, painful experience out there for some idiot on the Internet to stomp on. So I put a certain amount of that into what I do and turn it into someone else’s character. The only way I can really learn about myself is by doing it in someone else’s shoes stuck.”
In his statement Monday, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that the “age of this massive demand for clickbait and content” has made him increasingly “less and less interested in interviews.” Any “spark of something interesting” can be used as drama and “spit out as bait,” White continued – which makes him “no longer want to answer questions with any romance, passion or reflection, because I’m too busy worrying about inadvertently triggering nonsense like this from so-called ‘journalists’ and ‘editors’.”
White’s criticism of clickbait journalism
He ended his response to the wave of criticism following the interview by saying, “This has always been a problem because it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to every question, and stifles artistic vision and imagination, and pushes us all not to share anything interesting – which, by the way, was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in the same interview. But yeah. Content.”
White recently released “Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1,” a collection of lyrics from his solo recordings, including “No Name,” “The Raconteurs” and more, plus selected poems and lyrics by White and essays by poet Adrian Matejka.
