Song of the Day 10/26: The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”

It’s been an awful year all over the world, which might help explain why a woman confronted Edinburgh, Scotland, street musician Matt Grant last week by grabbing his guitar from his hands and smashing it on the sidewalk. Deprived of his means of earning a living, Grant posted an appeal on GoFundMe. He got a good response, bringing in the equivalent of $5,200, but when he got to the guitar shop he got a pleasant surprise — a “third party” had called every music shop in Edinburgh offering to pay for Grant’s new guitar, and the third party turned out to be Jack White. Grant promptly acknowledged his benefactor with an Instagram post of him busking anew with his new guitar, of course playing White’s most famous song.

The original has a cool video, too:

In another in the endless list of record company executive idiocies — seriously, meteorologists look like Nostradamus next to record company executives — White had to fight the suits to have the song released as a single in 2003, when it was the lead song on the White Stripes LP “Elephant.” It went on to win a Grammy, has been honored as one of the best rock songs of the young century, and has gone platinum in multiple countries, mainly because it became a sports stadium staple the world over.

That link traces how it became ubiquitous with football (soccer) fans all over Europe…

…as well as with college football crowds in the U.S.

Fun facts: As everyone (I hope) knows, the White Stripes’ instrumentation consisted of just a guitar and drums. The bass riff that defines the song was actually played through a pitch-shifting effect pedal that dropped the notes on White’s guitar an octave. White said the song is about his reaction to his growing fame at the time, but the title came from how he misheard “Salvation Army” as a child.