Meg White
Megan Martha White is an American musician who was the drummer and occasional vocalist of the rock duo the White Stripes. She was a key artist of the 2000s indie and garage rock movements, noted for her minimalist drumming style and reserved public persona. The White Stripes split up in 2011 after which she ceased performing. Her last media appearance was in 2009, and she has not been active in the music industry since.
Born and raised in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, White met Jack Gillis in the early 1990s and the two married in 1996, with Jack taking her surname. She began playing the drums in 1997 and formed the White Stripes with Jack that year. They divorced in 2000 but continued performing at her insistence, presenting themselves to the music press as siblings. Their 2001 breakthrough album, White Blood Cells, brought them international fame. This, along with the band's next three albums, established White as a key artist of the decade's rock revival. White had a short acting and modelling career, appearing in the 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes and a 2006 episode of The Simpsons. She was married to Jackson Smith from 2009 to 2013.
White's drumming initially polarized critics but has since become highly regarded and continually discussed. She has maintained an elusive media image and has given few interviews, which she puts down to shyness and a reclusive nature. With the White Stripes, she won six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025. Publications such as NME and Rolling Stone rank her among the greatest drummers in history.
Early life
Megan Martha White was born in the upper middle-class suburb Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan on December 10, 1974, to Catherine and Walter Hackett White Jr. The family was not religious and she described growing up as "pretty normal". White attended Grosse Pointe North High School. She has admitted that at that age she was "super-shy" and lacked direction.After graduating, she took on bar-tending jobs while attending a culinary school to pursue a career as a chef. She worked at a restaurant in downtown Royal Oak where she met the musician Jack White, then known as Jack Gillis, and a fellow high school senior from Mexicantown in Detroit. They formed a relationship and married in September 1996, with Jack taking her last name.
Career
Formation of the White Stripes (1997–2000)
In 1997, White began learning to play the drums using Jack's drum kit. Jack recalled that playing with White was "liberating and refreshing", opening up "something" within him. The two then formed the White Stripes, where they stuck to certain motifs: They presented themselves as siblings to an unknowing public, and kept to a monochromatic theme, dressing only in red, white, and black. They played their first gig at the Gold Dollar in Detroit, and achieved popularity in Michigan's underground garage rock scene, opening for and playing with established local bands such as Bantam Rooster and the Dirtbombs, among others. In 1998, they were approached by Dave Buick of the Detroit-based independent record label Italy Records, who offered to pay for their debut single. "Let's Shake Hands" was then released in February 1998.In 1999, the band signed with the California-based label Sympathy for the Record Industry, and released their self-titled debut album. AllMusic said that White's drumming "balances out the fretwork and the fretting with methodical, spare, and booming cymbal, bass drum, and snare". Following their divorce in 2000, White insisted that they keep the band going. Their second album, De Stijl, was released that same year. Rolling Stones Jenny Eliscu praised White's drumming, saying it "proves that you don't need bombast to make a blues explosion". It became a sleeper hit, after the White Stripes gained popularity in 2002. White also played drums for Soledad Brothers on their self-titled debut album.
Mainstream breakthrough and solo career (2001–2006)
The White Stripes rose to widespread recognition in 2001 with the release of their album White Blood Cells. Meg shared vocals with Jack on the tracks "Hotel Yorba" and "This Protector", and also on the Loretta Lynn cover "Rated X", featured as the B-side to "Hotel Yorba". It was their last album to be released with the Sympathy for the Record Industry label. White Blood Cells was given a major label re-release with V2 Records in 2002, which brought them to the forefront of the garage rock revival and made them one of the most acclaimed bands of the year. Chris Deville of Stereogum praised White for bashing "the bejesus out of her drums" and called the pair "too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore". The album included the groundbreaking single "Fell in Love with a Girl", which won them three awards at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. Also in 2002, the band performed at the MTV Movie Awards and on Saturday Night Live.The band's fourth studio album, Elephant, was released in 2003 through V2 Records and XL Recordings. It was critically acclaimed at the time, and has been retrospectively described by Heather Phares of AllMusic as their strongest work. Their continued success helped establish Meg and Jack as key figures of 2000s rock, and Elephant, along with White Blood Cells, were included on numerous editions of Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Phares described White's drumming on Elephant as "hypnotic" and "explosively minimal", and Bram Teltelman of Billboard characterized it as "simple but effective". Elephants first single, "Seven Nation Army", became the band's signature song and a sports anthem. The album's third single, "The Hardest Button to Button", features what journalist Alexis Petridis considered to be some of Meg's best drumming. Additionally, the track "In the Cold, Cold Night" features Meg singing lead for the first time. Tom Breihan of Stereogum described her voice as "magnetic", and Andrew Katchen with Billboard wrote that she sounded "delicate and sweet". The Guardian deemed the songs "In the Cold, Cold Night" and "Seven Nation Army" to be among the greatest songs made by the band. The album won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and "Seven Nation Army" won the Grammy for Best Rock Song. That same year, she appeared on the song "I'm So Glad" for Soledad Brothers.
White made her film debut appearing with Jack in Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes. They star as fictionalized versions of themselves in the segment "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil", which expands on Nikola Tesla and White Stripes motifs such as childhood innocence. She described her acting debut as "easier than I thought it was gonna be", and said she became "more confident than I used to be, but not much." Jarmusch believed that "she could have been a huge silent-movie star, just from her face." That same year, White began appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien as a recurring performer. In 2004, she starred in the band's first music film Under Blackpool Lights, which was shot entirely on super 8 film. Jamie Russell of BBC described her performance as "orgasmically pounding the drums" and "exhilarating". White appears on the cover of Whirlwind Heat's single "Pink" wearing a bunny costume; the photo was taken while the White Stripes and Whirlwind Heat toured together in Japan. Also in 2004, White appeared in an episode of Pancake Mountain and played Little Red Riding Hood in the music video for "Cha Cha Twist" by the Detroit Cobras.
File:The White Stripes.jpg|left|thumb|The White Stripes performing at the Bell Centre Arena in 2005 |alt=The White Stripes performing in 2005, with Meg White playing drums on the left and Jack White playing guitar on the right
The band experimented with their sound on their fifth album, 2005's Get Behind Me Satan with White using percussion bells, maracas, and tambourines. The album was critically acclaimed and won the band their second Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. White performed lead vocals on "Passive Manipulation", for which Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone described her vocals as "chilling" while Matthew Murphy of Pitchfork thought that the song "begs the gentle suggestion that Meg not be allowed to sing lead". She appears in the documentary The Fearless Freaks, which chronicles the rock band the Flaming Lips. She also performed with the White Stripes in the 2005 pilot episode of From the Basement.
White modeled for Marc Jacobs' 2006 Spring line and the March 2006 issue of ELLE. She was chosen to compose a drum theme for the film Let's Go to Prison by director Bob Odenkirk; however, it was removed. The White Stripes guest starred on The Simpsons in an episode titled "Jazzy and the Pussycats", which first aired on September 17, 2006. White had previously expressed interest in a Simpsons role, saying: "A guest appearance would be amazing. I wouldn't want to be in a Lisa episode. They're kind of boring. Maybe a Homer one would be better."
Later works and disbandment (2007–2011)
The White Stripes released their sixth and final album, Icky Thump, in 2007. Winning the Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song, the album was praised as the band returned to styles present on the band's first two albums. In addition to drumming, White played a 1959 Univox synth, spoke on the bagpipe-heavy track "St. Andrew " and provided backing vocals across the album. She was greatly praised by Alexis Petridis for her drumming while "St. Andrew" was ambivalently received by critics. NME dubbed her spoken performance "frantic" and "the weirdest thing" the band ever recorded, and Spin's Brian Raftery called it "a waste of hard-drive space."In the summer of 2007, before a show in Southaven, Mississippi, Ben Blackwell recalls that Meg approached him and said: "This is the last White Stripes show". He asked if she meant of the tour, but she responded: "No. I think this is the last show, period." On September 11, 2007, the White Stripes announced via their website that they were canceling 18 tour dates due to White's acute anxiety. The following day, the duo canceled the remainder of their 2007 UK tour dates as well. Jack worked with other artists in the meantime, but Meg remained largely out of the public eye, though she participated in releasing limited-edition Holga cameras stylized around the White Stripes in February 2008, and appeared briefly onstage during an encore set of a Detroit show with one of Jack's bands, the Raconteurs, in June 2008. In an interview with Music Radar, Jack explained that Meg's acute anxiety had been due to the combination of a very short pre-tour rehearsal time—that was further reduced by the birth of his son—and a hectic, multi-continental touring schedule. He explained: "I just came from a Raconteurs tour and went right into that, so I was already full-speed. Meg had come from a dead-halt for a year and went right back into that madness."
On February 20, 2009—and on the final episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien—the band performed the song "We're Going to Be Friends". In May 2009, Jack revealed the band's plan to release a seventh album, which never came to fruition. A documentary about their Canadian tour—titled The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights—premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 18, 2009. Directed by Emmett Malloy, the film documents the band's summer 2007 tour across Canada and contains live concert and off-stage footage. Bill Bradley for Vanity Fair opined that it was "impossible" not to see her as "road-weary and worn-out" at the end of the film. Meg appeared with Jack in the 2009 documentaries It Might Get Loud, which explores the careers of Jack, Jimmy Page and the Edge, and It Came From Detroit, which explores the 2000s Detroit rock scene.
On February 2, 2011, the band reported on their official website that they were disbanding. Their statement said it was not due to health issues or artistic differences, but "mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band". White has not been active in the music industry since.