Like first-gen punks, the White Stripes proved you didn’t have to be good to be great, that your limitations could enable rather than hinder expression.
After so many generations of Eric Claptons and Jonny Langs, it was refreshing at the turn of the century to hear someone have fun with the form again. The blues has always prized instrumental prowess, but blues rock typically equates that trait with authenticity of emotion. That playful sound is what made the White Stripes so revolutionary in the 2000s. He soloed frequently but never pointlessly, and indulged none of the ostentatious jamming that defines blues rock: no white-boy blues face, no standing at the lip of the stage, no look-how-deeply-I-am-feeling-these-notes bullshit.
Her chops might have been rudimentary, but Meg kept Jack’s guitar virtuosity in check and kept their music from being merely a display of technique.
