Jack White has clarified his comments about Taylor Swift‘s music and his own approach to songwriting.
The soloist and former White Stripes frontman shared a since-deleted post on social media last night (Monday March 9) to elaborate on why writing songs about his own life experiences wasn’t his style.
During a recent interview with The Guardian, White discussed artists like Swift, who he said often draw on their high-profile break-ups as inspiration. However, he explained that this way of creating art wasn’t for him.
“Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself,” he said.
“If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over.”
He continued: “So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
Writing online yesterday, White said he wanted to “put this to bed” while explaining that his remarks had been misinterpreted.
“I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together,” he wrote.
“What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing was that I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and it could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.”
He went on: “Taylor and other singers have tremendous success writing in their own styles and I’m very happy for them that they’ve succeeded in engaging with so many music lovers in their own way.
“Just because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way. They should do what works for them, and they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that.”
White then suggested that his comments had been taken out of context, saying that this made him “less and less interested in doing interviews” at a time when there’s “this massive demand for click bait and content”.
He explained that this had resulted in him “not want[ing] to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I’m too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense” in the media.
White concluded: “This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”
The musician was speaking to The Guardian about his new book, Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1. He also discussed US President Donald Trump – whom White has been a fervent critic of.
White criticised Trump last month over his military campaign in Iran and mocked him for being the leader of the Board of Peace. He had previously called on Trump to be removed from office after a racist meme was shared on his Truth Social account, depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
In January, White mocked Trump’s rambling anniversary press conference. He was also one of many celebrities to hit out at the POTUS for his comments regarding the death of Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle.
White’s first visual art show is set to open in London this spring. ‘These Thoughts May Disappear’ will open at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery on May 29 and run until September 13.
