Meg White

• 1. Introduction

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  Meg White did not attend her own induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025. The White Stripes were honored that year, and Jack White accepted the award and delivered a speech the pair had written together. White was the third female drummer to receive the honor. She is an American musician, born in 1974, who played drums and occasionally sang in the duo. Her last media appearance came in 2009, and she has stayed away from music since the band split in 2011. How did a shy bartender and culinary student end up behind a drum kit in a rock band? Why has her playing divided critics for so long? And what does her long silence do to the way people hear her?

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• 2. Grosse Pointe Beginnings

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  Megan Martha White was born on the 10th of December 1974 in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Her parents were Catherine and Walter Hackett White Jr., and she has an older sister. Her family has Scottish heritage. She grew up in the middle class Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Woods and later called her childhood "pretty normal" and non-religious.

  As a teenager she lived in Hamtramck, and she graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School. Bartending jobs covered the cost of her college studies. She then enrolled in culinary school, planning a career as a chef. Looking back, she described herself at that age as "super-shy" and without direction.

  One restaurant in downtown Royal Oak employed her alongside Corey Martin, the drummer of Electric Six.

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• 3. Siblings In Red

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  During her senior year of high school, White met a fellow senior and musician named Jack Gillis in Detroit. The two began a relationship and married in September 1996. Jack took her last name, so Jack Gillis became Jack White.

  In 1997 White started learning the drums on Jack's kit. Jack remembered her playing as "liberating and refreshing" and said it opened up "something" within him. That same year the two formed the White Stripes. They built the act around two motifs. They told the public they were siblings, and they dressed only in red, white and black.

  Their first show was at the Gold Dollar in Detroit. They found an audience in Michigan's underground garage rock scene, sharing bills with established local bands such as Bantam Rooster and the Dirtbombs. In 1998 Dave Buick of the Detroit label Italy Records approached them and offered to pay for a debut single. "Let's Shake Hands" came out in February 1998.

  The marriage ended in divorce in 2000. The band carried on, and that was her decision, made at her insistence. The music press kept hearing the story that the two were siblings. Even after the divorce, the former couple lived in a house Jack had bought from his parents, and they stayed there until 2003.

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• 4. Records And Recognition

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  In 1999 the White Stripes signed with Sympathy for the Record Industry, a California independent label, and released a self-titled debut album. Reviews were generally positive. De Stijl arrived on the same label in 2000. It became a sleeper hit once the band's popularity surged in 2002. White also drummed on the self-titled debut album by Soledad Brothers in 2000. Rolling Stone's Jenny Eliscu felt White's spare playing proved that "you don't need bombast to make a blues explosion".

  White Blood Cells followed in 2001 and was the band's last album for Sympathy. White shared vocals with Jack on "Hotel Yorba" and "This Protector". She also sang on "Rated X", a Loretta Lynn cover that appeared as the B-side to "Hotel Yorba". The group then signed a licensing deal with V2 Records through Jack's own label, Third Man Records. A major label reissue of White Blood Cells in 2002 pushed them to the front of the garage rock revival. Stereogum's Chris Deville praised White for bashing "the bejesus out of her drums". The single "Fell in Love with a Girl" won three awards at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. Rolling Stone named the pair its 2002 People of the Year, and NME placed White sixth on its Cool List that year and third in 2003.

  Elephant arrived in 2003 to critical acclaim. Its first single, "Seven Nation Army", became the band's signature song and a sports anthem. The album won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and the song won the Grammy for Best Rock Song. Elephant and White Blood Cells both appeared on numerous editions of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. The Guardian counted "Seven Nation Army", "The Hardest Button to Button" and "In the Cold, Cold Night" among the band's greatest songs.

  The fifth album, Get Behind Me Satan, came out in 2005 and brought the band a second Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. The band experimented with its sound on it, and White played percussion bells, maracas and tambourines.

  Icky Thump, the sixth and final album, appeared in 2007. It won the Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song, and critics praised its return to the styles of the first two records. Besides drumming, White played a 1959 Univox synth, sang backing vocals across the album, and spoke on the bagpipe-heavy "St. Andrew (This Battle Is in the Air)". Critics received that track with mixed feelings. NME called her spoken performance "frantic" and "the weirdest thing" the band ever recorded. Spin's Brian Raftery called it "a waste of hard-drive space". Alexis Petridis, meanwhile, gave her drumming on the album great praise.

  Across all of it, the band sold over 5 million albums and won a Brit Award from six nominations. Of eleven Grammy nominations, six became wins.

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• 5. Peppermint And Primal Beats

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  A bag of peppermint candy in a drugstore gave White's drum kit its signature look. Jack noticed it and told her: "That should be painted on your bass drum because you've been drumming like a little kid". From the early years through Get Behind Me Satan, the heads of her toms and bass drum almost always carried peppermint swirls. Her love of the candy inspired many of the band's artistic schemes, in live shows and music videos. She played a Ludwig Classic Maple kit with Paiste cymbals. From 2006 she used a pair of 14-inch Paiste Signature Medium Hi-Hats, a 19-inch Signature Power Crash and a 22-inch 2002 Ride. On the Icky Thump tour the bass drum head changed to a button design inspired by the Pearlies clothing the band wore on that album's cover.

  Her influences ran from the proto-punk of the MC5 and the Stooges to the blues of Son House, Blind Willie McTell and Robert Johnson, along with Bob Dylan. She also loved the Cramps, the Velvet Underground, the punk-blues band the Gun Club, and country singers Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn. For drumming itself she looked to Peggy O'Neill of the Gories and Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground. Critics often compare her with Tucker.

  Before shows, her warm-up included "whiskey and Red Bull." She called her "primal" approach "my strength. A lot of drummers would feel weird about being that simplistic." She respected other techniques but felt hers suited the White Stripes best. When criticism really bothered her, she reminded herself that her technique mattered to the band. Jack called her style the band's best element. She co-wrote the music but did not write lyrics.

  Critics have taken her beats apart note by note. On "Fell in Love with a Girl" she plays a "hyper, stuttering rock beat" with a skipped snare and prominent crash cymbals. On "Seven Nation Army" a driving quarter note groove imitates a heartbeat and punctuates the guitar. The intro leans on the bass drum, hi-hat and floor tom. The snare enters before the chorus and continues through it with a crash cymbal. Phares called her playing "hypnotic" and "explosively minimal", and Billboard's Chuck Taylor called it "simple but effective". Alexis Petridis hears some of her best drumming on "The Hardest Button to Button".

  On "In the Cold, Cold Night", White sang lead for the first time, and Billboard's Andrew Katchen called her voice "delicate and sweet". She usually sang backing vocals but sometimes enjoyed taking the lead. She sang lead on "Who's a Big Baby?", "Passive Manipulation" and "St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air)". She shared lead with Jack on "It's True That We Love One Another", "Little Ghost", "Rag and Bone" and "I'm Slowly Turning Into You". She preferred not to listen to her own voice and was confused by the cheers when she sang live. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called her vocals on "Passive Manipulation" "chilling". Pitchfork's Matthew Murphy wrote that the song "begs the gentle suggestion that Meg not be allowed to sing lead".

  Her Detroit contemporaries also included the Detroit Cobras, the Von Bondies and Soledad Brothers. She worked with these bands and others on the compilation Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit, recorded in Jack's living room.

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• 6. Beyond The Drum Kit

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  In 2003, director Jim Jarmusch cast White and Jack as fictional versions of themselves in Coffee and Cigarettes. Their segment, "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil", draws on Nikola Tesla and on band motifs such as childhood innocence. White said her acting debut was "easier than I thought it was gonna be". She added that she had become "more confident than I used to be, but not much." Jarmusch believed that "she could have been a huge silent-movie star, just from her face."

  That same year she began appearing as a recurring performer on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2004 she starred in the band's first music film, Under Blackpool Lights, which was shot entirely on super 8 film. Jamie Russell of the BBC found her performance exhilarating. The year 2004 also brought a bunny costume, which she wore on the cover of Whirlwind Heat's single "Pink". The photo was taken while the White Stripes and Whirlwind Heat toured Japan together. She appeared in an episode of Pancake Mountain as well. For the Detroit Cobras video "Cha Cha Twist", she played Little Red Riding Hood.

  In 2005 she appeared in The Fearless Freaks, a documentary about the Flaming Lips. The next year she modeled for Marc Jacobs' 2006 Spring line and for the March 2006 issue of Elle. Director Bob Odenkirk chose her to compose a drum theme for his film Let's Go to Prison, but the theme was removed.

  The Simpsons gave her a different kind of role. The White Stripes guest starred in the episode "Jazzy and the Pussycats", which first aired in September 2006, and White voiced Meg. She had once said of the show: "A guest appearance would be amazing. I wouldn't want to be in a Lisa episode. They're kind of boring. Maybe a Homer one would be better."

  In 2008 she also appeared in It Might Get Loud, a documentary about the careers of Jack, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and the Edge of U2.

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• 7. Praise And Pushback

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  In 2001, Pitchfork's Dan Kilian and Ryan Schreiber wrote that White hit her kit so hard that you would picture an incredible hulk. Yet photos showed a waifish indie girl with pigtails and a nasty smirk, weighing 98 pounds. They compared her fury to E. Honda's hundred-hand slap. In 2002 Richard Harrington of The Washington Post described a surprisingly full sound, loud and raucous, like the Carpenters on steroids.

  Not every writer agreed. In 2001, Ann Powers of The New York Times argued that Jack was constrained by White's deliberately undeveloped approach. In 2003 Brent DiCrescenzo called her drumming "pancake-handed" and "sloppy". A writer for Vulture who reviewed the 2007 Madison Square Garden show judged her singing "pure amateur hour". By contrast, The New York Times's Kelefa Sanneh wrote that same year that her drumming was more sophisticated than people realized. He said she "refuses to imitate a metronome" and hears the music as a series of phrases, each with its own shape and tempo.

  In 2023, journalist Lachlan Markay posted a tweet calling her terrible. It went viral, and Jack and several musicians and critics came to her defense. Markay later deleted his comments and apologized. Jack called her drumming the "best part of this band" and her a "strong female presence in rock and roll", and he dismissed the negative reviews as sexist.

  The verdict has shifted since. David Renshaw of The Guardian wrote that she "got a raw deal during her White Stripes days." Variety's Chris Willman observed that she seems to have been absorbed into rock orthodoxy as a great drummer "by near-acclamation". MusicRadar's Stuart Williams wrote: "Nothing starts an argument faster than questioning Meg White's drumming abilities." Lindsay Zoladz of The New York Times called her style "quintessentially rock 'n' roll" and said she excels at withholding, creating negative space and subverting expectation. In 2024 Jonny Walfisz of Euronews likened her to Ringo Starr of the Beatles, since both showed creativity through minimalism. Rankings followed: 81st on VH1's list of top women in music in 2012, 94th on Rolling Stone's drummers list in 2016, 12th on NME's drummer list in 2018, and 88th on Consequence of Sound's list in 2024.

  Musicians have lined up behind her. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana called her one of his favorite drummers of all time and said nobody plays the drums like her. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine praised her style, swag and taste in an Instagram post. Nandi Bushell wrote that the White Stripes moved her at 5 years old to want to play the drums. Tré Cool of Green Day named her a favorite, and Olivia Rodrigo and Margo Price have also been influenced by her.

  Popular culture argued about her as well. In the 2003 film School of Rock, the character Freddy Jones, played by Kevin Clark, declares that White "can't drum!" Katie, played by Rivkah Reyes, answers: "At least she has rhythm." In 2004 Drew Barrymore played her on Saturday Night Live, performing "Seven Nation Army" with Jimmy Fallon. Ray LaMontagne named a song after her on his 2008 album Gossip in the Grain. Tracey Thorn in 2012 and Wanda Jackson in 2013 each covered "In the Cold, Cold Night" as tributes.

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• 8. A Quiet Exit

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  In the summer of 2007, before a show in Southaven, Mississippi, White said something that startled Ben Blackwell. Blackwell, Jack's nephew and the group's archivist, recalls her saying: "This is the last White Stripes show". He asked whether she meant the tour, and she answered: "No. I think this is the last show, period." On the 11th of September 2007 the band's website announced that 18 tour dates were canceled because of White's acute anxiety. The next day the rest of the 2007 UK tour dates were canceled as well. Jack told Music Radar that the anxiety came from a very short rehearsal period before the tour, which the birth of his son cut even shorter, together with a hectic touring schedule across several continents.

  White stayed largely out of view while Jack worked with other artists. In February 2008 she took part in releasing limited-edition Holga cameras styled after the White Stripes. In June 2008 she appeared briefly onstage during the encore of a Detroit show by the Raconteurs, one of Jack's bands. On the 20th of February 2009 the duo reunited on the last episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien to play "We're Going to Be Friends". That performance is her last media appearance to date.

  In May 2009 Jack revealed that the band planned a seventh album, which never happened. On the 18th of September 2009 the documentary The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Emmett Malloy directed it, drawing on the band's summer 2007 tour across Canada, with concert and off-stage footage. Vanity Fair's Bill Bradley saw White as "road-weary and worn-out" by the end of the film. On the 2nd of February 2011 the band announced on its website that it was disbanding. The statement denied any health issue or artistic difference and said the reason was "mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band".

  Also in May 2009, White married guitarist Jackson Smith, son of Patti Smith and Fred "Sonic" Smith, at a small ceremony in Jack's backyard in Nashville, Tennessee. They divorced in July 2013. In the early 2000s she had briefly dated Oliver Henry of Soledad Brothers.

  White lives with acute anxiety and low self-esteem and calls herself "very shy". She told Rolling Stone in 2005 that "the more you talk, the fewer people listen". She told Nylon in 2007 that being recognized in public "is like if your boss came every morning and tapped you on the head to wake you up, it's like, not now." In a 2025 interview with Mojo, Jack described her singing into a microphone on stage as "a miracle, a blessing from above".

  She does not give solo interviews. For a 2023 Elle article, the journalist could only reach her through friends. NPR's Talia Schlanger called her the "21st century's loudest introvert", and Zoladz called her a "feminist hero" and an "icon for introverts". Ben Sisario of The New York Times described her as one of the great recluses of 21st-century pop. Andy Greene of Rolling Stone wrote that she was a reluctant star even in the early days and probably has no interest in returning, even for a reunion. He added: "Meg White doesn't owe us anything."

  Her silence has not stopped her from speaking up once or twice with Jack. During the 2016 United States presidential election, the two issued a joint statement criticizing Donald Trump after "Seven Nation Army" appeared in his campaign without their consent. When his 2024 campaign used the song again, they filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in September 2024. It was dropped in November 2024.

  In 2011, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Women Who Rock" exhibition displayed her Pearl Export bass drum, complete with the peppermint design she used at the band's first show. It also displayed the Pearly Queen outfit she wore in the Icky Thump album photos. That outfit returned for the class of 2025 exhibit.

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