White Stripes Nation Manifesto IV: "You're Pretty Good Looking"
Published October 31, 2005
LegendaryMonkey: In our continuing quest to convince the masses that the White Stripes are the heirs of all that is pure and good and absolute--
Generalissimo Alberto: ...and that they should clench the world in their iron fists, imposing peace and justice.
LM: Right, right, rule the world, however you want it... anyway, in our quest to sway music fans everywhere to our cause, we present the White Stripes with a manifesto of their own:
"You're Pretty Good Looking"
De Stijl, 2000
LM: The opening track from De Stijl, which is either the most loved or the most ignored album in the White Stripes catalogue, depending on who is talking about it, is a retro throwback to the time when rock was innocent and new. On the face, at least. The lyrics tell a different story, but we'll get into that in a moment. The song is a sweet puff of sound, reminiscent of early Beatles and the Kinks. Of course, even when Jack and Meg are clearly riffing on an earlier musical theme, as they are here, they never quite slide fully into the mold, and the guitar opens on on "You're Pretty Good Looking" in a way that we would have never heard back in the 1960s.
GA: This is raw pop. Early Kinks is just the right point of comparison. It's a joining point where "pop" and "garage band" and "punk" all come back together. It's a perfectly catchy, bouncy little radio friendly pop tune, with a purposeful tinge of crudity in the performance and recording. Those with less education in the subtlety of radical rhetoric than the leaders of this junta might understandably mistake this for lost Kinks circa 1963.
LM: But what I find particularly interesting here are the lyrics. Now, Alberto there is gonna tell you that mention of broken backs and futuristic dates means that this is a blueprint for the revolution at hand... that the proletariat (those of us with the broken backs) are gonna rise up and will have cemented power by 2525... but I see something completely different here.
GA: Our beloved revolutionary sweetheart struggles to unlock the deeply encoded insurgent messages from our Dear Leader's pen, but she misses the mark. "You're pretty good looking for a girl," but as an insurrectionist leader of historical import, he and we don't have time to indulge our personal romantic strategies.
- White Stripes Nation Manifesto IV: "You're Pretty Good Looking"
- Published: October 31, 2005
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Part of a feature: White Stripes Nation
- Writer: monkey2man
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Comments on this articleComments
Our revolutionary council is still debating Chesney's fate. The bleeding heart pinko Monkey urges compassion and forgiveness- perhaps euthanasia.
I, on the other hand, demand Justice. He should be locked in a room, and forced to listen to modern commercial country radio 24/7 for the rest of his unnatural life.
Great series and fantastic banter, folks. This is a truly spectacular gem of a raw-esque pop tune. I agree completely that it's brightly garage circa early Kinks.
I seem to like all WS albums about equally. I find about half completely off-the-charts brilliant and compulsive while the other half is just "nice," in the I'll listen if it's on and enjoy but won't run it down on the iPod while flying through traffic.
EB, sounds like you need a dose of the convincing stick!
Er. I mean logic. Al, stop threatening to shoot Kenny Chesney, too. I mean, he IS a pretty sad excuse for a "musician," but frankly, those simply aren't our people. PUT 'EM ALL AGAINST THE WALL!
Hmm. I'm not very sweetly revolutionary today, am I?
Oh, I'm on the viva la revolucion bandwagon, LM, I just have a somewhat unusual take on their albums.
Oh, I follow. There are a few songs I'm rather "meh" about, but ever since my car became the Stripes mobile, all White Stripes Radio all the time, I've even gotten to like most of those.
They're insidious.
Is "Your Southern Can Is Mine" on your list? That song just about sends me pan-dimensional.
Sorry, just saw this! We're going to do a separate set on covers and such... songs that weren't written by Jackie boy himself. We'll cover it there. Which is why we're not doing Death Letter in this series.
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So, what happened to Kenny Chesney after the Revolution?