All Favorites // Recommendations // Interests of Jack White

Movies

Cool Hand Luke

When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

Jack White

Musician

Yeah, it’s just a lot of ideas about prison and things like that; Howard Hughes’ favourite movie. I mention Cool Hand Luke and also a lot of ideas about musicians and artists all being in a family together.

Planet of the Apes

An U.S. Spaceship lands on a desolate planet, stranding astronaut Taylor in a world dominated by apes, 2000 years into the future, who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist.

Jack White

Musician

Like, we’d see in a science fiction movie, like Planet of the Apes, where they’d have a human as a pet or something like that.

Books

Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music

Musicians strive to “keep it real”; listeners condemn “fakes”; ... but does great music really need to be authentic? Did Elvis sing from the heart, or was he just acting? Were the Sex Pistols more real than disco? Why do so many musicians base their approach on being authentic, and why do music buffs fall for it every time? By investigating this obsession in the last century through the stories of John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jimmie Rodgers, Donna Summer, Leadbelly, Neil Young, Moby, and others, Faking It rethinks what makes popular music work. Along the way, the authors discuss the segregation of music in the South, investigate the predominance of self-absorption in modern pop, reassess the rebellious ridiculousness of rockabilly and disco, and delineate how the quest for authenticity has not only made some music great and some music terrible but also shaped in a fundamental way the development of popular music in our time.

Jack White

Musician

Have you read this book Faking It [by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor]? It’s about the history of authenticity in music, and it’s brilliantly written. It really lays out the law of how ridiculous we’ve all been for so long, and how we buy the hype that’s fed to us.

Music

Old Town Road — Lil Nas X

Jack White

Musician

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “The song is only a minute and 47 seconds long or something — that’s how long ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ was. People said, ‘They’re not going to play that on radio.’ But it worked, and it’s great that it’s happening again.”

Greta Van Fleet

Jack White

Musician

That guy has a very cool voice. The more he makes it his own, the better.

Royal Blood

Jack White

Musician

And then you’ve got Royal Blood, another really good two-piece band that’s just badass.

Twenty One Pilots

Jack White

Musician

I love what they’re doing. The first time I saw them was on Saturday Night Live. And I thought ‘Oh, that’s really great. Another really cool two-piece band that can do something really powerful.

Black Monk Time

Jack White

Musician

They only released one album, 1966's Black Monk Time. But that was enough to hook White, who calls them "anti-Beatles" and says of their songcraft, "Their melodies were pop-destructive and must be played to your younger brother."

The Party Ain't Over

Jack White

Musician

White oversaw Wanda Jackson's 2011 album The Party Ain't Over, surrounding the raspy voice of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with some rocked-up bombast. The result got Jackson, "the Queen of Rockabilly,"

Funhouse

Jack White

Musician

I really like the Stooges album Funhouse.

Vegan Cannibals

Jack White

Musician

That made me and Dominic do our first recordings and want us to release our own tape.

I Can't Explain — The Who

Jack White

Musician

The first song I learned how to play was I Can't Explain by the WHO.

Only — Nicki Minaj, Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown

Jack White

Musician

“[If] you listen to Nicki Minaj’s ‘Only’,” he continues. “I mean, some of those lyrics are like, ‘Holy shit!’ I, as an adult, listening to that by myself, am shocked at some of the words that I’m hearing. But it’s brilliant! It’s brilliant to be able to say that, to be able to say whatever you want. I couldn’t get away with saying half of those things that Nicki Minaj says in that song. It’s just brilliant to see how far things have gone in that sense, and how cool it is for people to talk about these moments and say, ‘Wow, check this out.’”