10 Terrible Songs That Ruined Otherwise Flawless Albums
6. The White Stripes Im Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman (White Blood Cells)
https://youtu.be/m2W-d64Z3vI In which Jack White spells out the Nice Guy approach in song form. Women are unimpressed by his door-holding abilities and other basic courtesies, and he continues to craft his persona as the guy at the party who clearly thinks he is an eccentric but is probably just an unconfident man with too many trinkets. The song serves as something of a warning to retroactively look over some of Whites catalogue for evidence of similarly bitter behavior. And surprisingly, it is chock full of these thematic lamentations towards women from his earliest work up until his solo output. There is an evident desire for silence and submission from the objects of many of his songs, and this misogyny is the low point of The White Stripes' seemingly naive 2001 album. The musical simplicity of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" or "We're Going to Be Friends" exists within the track, though the typical Jack White minimalism of the era does not overshadow the concerning lyricism.