I was just talking to a fellow songwriter on TikTok about boxes we creatives put ourselves in to create artificial constriction within to work. An example is the White Stripes. People who said that they needed more than two people did not get the White Stripes. The constriction was the point.

Jack White’s favorite song, he claims, is Son House’s Grinnin’ in Your Face. It’s just Son tapping his foot to a time that clearly exists only for him and singing acapella along with it. It’s a great song. I’ve covered it before on TikTok, I believe. But that’s what gave him the inspiration. Or that’s the claim.

My point in bringing this up is to point out that if you continue to create in that same box with the same constrictions, you’ll limit your growth. Jack and Meg split but Jack evolved as a musician, because he created new, different boxes within which to work.

My dad was over earlier and I read him the poem I posted here yesterday called “Thank You” and he commented that he liked the rhyme scheme, his implication was more than other poems he has read that I have written, and so I explained to him that I’m always changing rhyme schemes. I pointed out I wrote a story in prose the other day here about a werewolf that I formatted as if it was poetry.

I like to change boxes as often as I can, but I do like to put myself in boxes. If Jack and Meg had never split, the White Stripes music could not really grow. Their final album was great, sure. But it was also sounding much the same as everything else the band had ever done and they were clearly at their peak. You always want to go out with a bang.

Icky Thump was commercially and critically successful including a Grammy Win for Best Alternative Music Album. This was when Rock music was clearly on the decline. Bands repeating the same formula that was successful in the 90s with bands like Pearl Jam and Bush, take Nickelback for example, were accused being too formulaic and repetitive. That’s really funny if you grew up listening to Nirvana.

So my advice is to box yourself in. It creates an artificial challenge to you. Sure Jack could have hired another guitarist at any point after the commercial success of The White Stripes. He could have hired a bassist. Heck, a bassist actually recorded bass tracks for every track on White Blood Cells and released it as Red Blood Cells. It’s an interesting listen but misses the point.