Jack White hates being branded “a rocker”.
The ‘Steady as She Goes’ hitmaker – who is best known for fronting The White Stripes and The Raconteurs – has two very different solo albums out this year, the heavy ‘Fear of the Dawn’ and the acoustic ‘Entering Heaven Alive’, and he admitted he finds it frustrating when people try to pigeonhole his sound.
He told The Sun newspaper: “Nobody likes to be labelled. If I see an article written about me that says ‘rocker Jack White’, I don’t like it. But I do get why someone might say it.
“If they say, ‘White Stripe Jack White’ because they only know me from that, I also understand that perfectly. But I’m left thinking, ‘I’m not just the guy from The White Stripes’.
“People have said I’m ‘the Willy Wonka of music’. Again, I understand it. But the words just sound so silly!”
When he started work last year, Jack had no intention of recording two albums but soon realised they could be divided.
He said: “I had no intention of doing two. I was just writing songs and they started jumping into different shoeboxes.
“It was like having playlists on my computer with quieter songs in one and heavier songs in the other.”
Unlike many artists, the 46-year-old singer didn’t use the COVID-19 pandemic to work on new music because it felt “a bit strange” not being able to tour a record.
He said: “Only at the beginning of winter did I write a couple of acoustic songs — but that was it
“It felt as if the pandemic could go on for years so I told myself, ‘If I’m not going to tour, then releasing an album is a bit strange’. I didn’t want to put something out that just disappears into mist.
“So I decided not to bother and work on other creative things. I knew I could always come back to music.”