Is Meg White a good drummer?
She gets a lot of shit from a lot of people. But she also gets a lot of praise. So which one is it? (It's the second one.)
Meg White absolutely is a good drummer.
The White Stripes. One of the more iconic duos of the early 2000s. If you think you don’t know them but you’ve ever attended a football game, you have sang their anthemic Seven Nation Army. They made some noise in Detroit when starting out in the very end of the 90s and really took off with the song in 2003.
This month is the 20th anniversary of their album Elephant, home of not only hits like Seven Nation Army, but also Ball and Biscuit, The Hardest Button to Button, The Air Near My Fingers, and fan-favourite Hypnotize.
This explosive, exciting album would not be the same were it not for Meg White. Her drumming is so simplistic that some people have brushed it off as simply bad. This decades-long debate was most recently re-ignited – unsurprisingly – on Twitter. Last month, journalist Lachlan Markay tweeted (and deleted) the words “The tragedy of The White Stripes is how great they would’ve been with a half-decent drummer. Yeah yeah I’ve heard all the “but it’s a carefully crafted sound mannnn!” takes. I’m sorry Meg White was terrible and no band is better for having shitty percussion.”
What followed was an army (no pun intended) of people coming to Meg White’s defence: Questlove, Laura Jane Grace, Geoff Barrow, Ruban Nielson, and Jack White’s ex-wife Karen Elson. Jack White himself chimed in (although not directly), writing a poem in her honour.
I personally first became aware of this debate when I was watching my childhood (and possibly still current) favourite movie: School of Rock. Specifically in the scene where Freddie tells Katie to name two good female drummers. Katie names Sheila E. and Meg White, to which Freddie replies “she can’t drum!” Katie retorts with “she’s a better drummer than you, at least she has rhythm.” With this, the seed was planted into my 6 year old brain that Meg White is in fact a good drummer (surely watching this movie at least 30 times growing up did not affect my opinion whatsoever).
I know very little about drumming. Despite asking for a drum kit for Christmas when I was 7 years old, my technicality never evolved past haphazardly banging on my child-sized kit to the dismay of my poor parents. But what I do know is how to determine when something matches the music or not. And I know that the appeal of the White Stripes is this simplicity, this child-like approach to the drums – albeit with better control than I had at the age of 7.
“She’s a better drummer than you, at least she has rhythm.”
Meg White is inseparable from her drumming. Beyond her work in The White Stripes, we know very little about her. She has described herself as “very shy” and has not been seen in the media since 2009. Although Jack White has been accused in the past for allegedly overshadowing her, she herself disproved this in the film Under The Great White Northern Lights saying, “it has nothing to do with you”.
Yet her silence disappears when she sits behind the drums. Her music is unavoidable, riotous and – to use Mr. Markay’s mocking words – carefully crafted. Being half of The White Stripes, she exudes the personality of the group: child-like, simple, and minimalist. The band itself is not just about music, but it’s an experiment in aesthetic. Jack White’s obsession with stripping everything down to its bare bones was a big part of the band’s identity. The colours: black, white, red; the music: drums, guitar, singing; the makeup: one man, one woman. Everything is as simple as it can possibly be, so why would this not apply to the drums themselves?
The simplicity is the point. As it was for a lot of the music that inspired The White Stripes. Born in Detroit in the 90s, they were heavily influenced by garage rock, punk, and blues – all genres which prioritise emotion over technique. Meg White has a deep understanding of this music and of the goals of the band. She herself has addressed the criticism, saying “I appreciate other kinds of drummers who play differently, but it’s not my style or what works for this band. I get [criticism] sometimes, and I go through periods where it really bothers me. But then I think about it, and I realise that this is what is really needed for this band.”
“Being half of The White Stripes, she exudes the personality of the group: child-like, simple, and minimalist.”
Elsewhere, Jack White has acknowledged the deliberate childishness of the band: “There's definitely a childishness in it. From Meg's standpoint, the drumming is real primitive and I really love that. My voice, I think, sometimes sounds like a little kid.” This sense of youth is palpable in Rag and Bone, one of my personal favourites. The strength of the song comes from their childish interplay, reminiscent of scavengers, with her ad-libbing and thunderous drums creating the beloved messy atmosphere. Likewise, Hypnotize would simply not have the same buildup without the introduction of that snare, the release only finally being granted by her cymbals.
Technical complexity does not automatically equate high quality, and simplicity is not the same as shoddy work. The same arguments have not been said about Paul Cook’s drumming, or the simplistic guitar work of Johnny Ramone. If banging bar chords and playing all downstrokes is admired in these punk guitarists, why is the same admiration not applied to Meg White’s drumming?
Arguably because she’s a woman. Women often have to be phenomenal to receive the same level of admiration as an above-average man. It’s an unfortunate, exhausting fact of life. Yet to quote Jack White himself, “Her femininity and extreme minimalism are too much to take for some metal heads and reverse-contrarian hipsters. She can do what those with ‘technical prowess’ can’t. She inspires people to bash on pots and pans. For that, they repay her with gossip and judgment. In the end she’s laughing all the way to the Prada handbag store. She wins every time.”
“I appreciate other kinds of drummers who play differently, but it’s not my style or what works for this band. I get [criticism] sometimes, and I go through periods where it really bothers me. But then I think about it, and I realise that this is what is really needed for this band.”
Despite her extreme timidity, her drumming style is unapologetically her own. She has been facing criticism and has never compromised her style. She brings honesty to the music, playing it in her own way and therefore being irreplaceable in what The White Stripes were trying to achieve.
Songs like Icky Thump, Bone Broke, or A Martyr For My Love For You would not be the same without her kick drum thumping like a heartbeat. Black Math, I’m Slowly Turning Into You, I Fell In Love With a Girl and Screwdriver wouldn’t have the same feel without her own particular thrashing, controlled-chaos wall of cymbals. She brings the sticky, dripping swagger to Why Can’t You Be Nicer To Me, I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, and Hello Operator.
The short and sweet, less than a minute-long Little Room is a testament of her own ability. With no instrumentals from Jack White and only two verses, the drums are the ones that have to carry the whole song. The incredibly controlled, tense drums are as simple as they can be in a track that serves almost as an interlude to the album.
Elsewhere in the band’s Little Series (every album has a song title with the word “little” in it), she shines in the bluesy Little Bird, being the epitome of cool. In Little Acorns, she joins the percussive piano after the inspirational old-school monologue about Janet and the squirrel in a heart-palpitating sequence. In the Irish-inspired Little Ghost her subdued performance works like a sparkle of glitter, that little extra dose of love that a child places on a macaroni picture frame to give to their mother. The rowdy Little Cream Soda lets her let loose in those crashing cymbals, making the perfect soundtrack to throwing plates to a wall or smashing a TV with a baseball bat.
Her talents are not restricted to drumming. In the rare occasions when we hear her voice (sung or spoken), she does not disappoint, such as in the incredibly sweet In The Cold Cold Night. Her silent strength once again becomes evident in the feminist cry of Passive Manipulation (a mere 30 seconds of telling us: “women listen to your mothers, don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers. Take a step back, take a look at one another, you need to know the difference between a father and a lover”). Yet another example of her knowledge not to cave in the face of angry purist punk men saying she can’t drum. She knows what she’s doing. The simplicity of the band is largely created around Meg White’s drumming, according to Jack White.
“She can do what those with ‘technical prowess’ can’t. She inspires people to bash on pots and pans.”
The White Stripes have never been intricate, and they have never tried to be. It’s a band about stripping away the excess, trimming the fat and leaving only the essentials (how very Rick Rubin of them). The drums are truly inevitable in every track, not overshadowing Jack White’s guitar or vocals but adding so much to it. Everything works together in perfect harmony, and this could not be achieved if perhaps Meg White prioritised the prog-rock tendencies of overly complicated drum licks. She is the heartbeat of every track, bringing life to everything she touches. So much so that the band's name itself was inspired by Jack and Meg's last name and the peppermint candies Meg loved to eat.
Although she has been dubbed one of the greatest musicians of all time by the likes of Rolling Stone, NME, Universal Music Group, Clash, Tom Morello, and Dave Grohl, she doesn’t need this praise. Her talent speaks for itself. No one else can drum like her, and no one else should try to. Her appeal is incomparable, unique.
