Jack White: Blue Orchid: Rock Commentaries Selection From Chapter IX

Blue Orchid is about the corruption of innocence, probably in love, though the song has been read as being about molestation, and may carry this meaning as an undercurrent. Commentators, as on Songmeanings, note that a Russian child sex ring was named “Blue Orchid.” But that is not the meaning here. The reason that it seems the song must be about love and infidelity is the line “Your lips taste sour / But you think its just me teasing you.” The lyrics are these:

You got a reaction.

You got a reaction, didn’t you?

You took a white orchid,

You took a white orchid, turned it blue.

Somethings better than nothing

Somethings better than nothing, its giving up.

We all need to do something.

Try to keep the truth from showing up.

How dare you.

How old are you now anyway?

How dare you.

How old are you now anyway?

You’re given a flower

But I guess there’s just no pleasing you

Your lips tastes sour.

But you think its just me teasing you.

You got a reaction

You got a reaction, didn’t you

You took a white orchid

You took a white orchid, turned it blue.

Get behind me

Get behind me now anyway.

You got a reaction.

You got a reaction, didn’t you

You took a white orchid.

You took a white orchid, turned it blue.

   “Get behind me” is of course what the Christians say when the Devil is near. It probably comes from Matthew 4:10, after the temptation, when Jesus says “Be gone (hyp-age).” The snake enters the Video right at “Get behind me.”“Your lips taste sour” does not fit a molestation. It is rather a broken love, though the lines “How old are you now anyway,” and “How dare you” make the rock anger fit a molestation. “Turned it blue” would then be as in the blues, a love turned from innocence to sorrow by infidelity. We will try to read the song this way, and see if it remains coherent. “You got a reaction” would be like a response to the excuse that she was just trying to get some reaction from him, an aloof lover. “We all need to do something” and “How old are you now anyway” then fit with something like that she did some other guy while he was away. “It’s giving up” is to give up on the love, to choose the appetites over love. This is the failure of the love in one of the tests that show true love. Is she so immature that she must have something for the appetites even at the cost of love? “You got a reaction” is then that she destroyed their love, his innocent love, turned it blue, and now he does not want her anymore. The reaction is “get behind me,” “anyway” repeated from the question “How old are you now, anyway.” From the song “Red Roses for a Blue Lady,” the white orchid is the lapel used at weddings.

   The video for this song is an artistic masterpiece. The clothing of Jack, as well as the conclusion with the white horse, are disturbing, but the interpretation shows the meaning. The dancer woman is the anima, or an “anima figure,” and it said that Jack took up with her after the video. Indeed, she is sneaking in, so if it were not for other lines, it might be a woman who snuck in and made the singer corrupt his marriage, and he may intentionally make this ambiguous from magnanimity.  It is also possible that infidelity led to infidelity in the lover, the one speaking. “You” could be the one who snuck in, a seducer, but that does not fit with all the lines. The apple has this meaning, though, the destruction of the innocence of his marriage. The white horse is again the pure heart or spirit, as in “ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn,” the vehicle of the pure passions that carry the true lover. The perversion of one brief scene is the corruption of innocence that is the theme of the song, and the appetites adhering to the white horse, show that in the lover, as human, which allows for the rage in projection. Anger is always due to the projection of that in the soul of the one enraged which is like what was acted upon by the perpetrator. Hence, we will stick to our first reading that it is the same event as Seven Nation Army,” as the only coherent reading of all the lines. Otherwise, one would approach these matters with all the concern of a Lao Tzu, and there would be nothing for the song to work through. But it arrives, again, in “leave it alone” and “get back home.”

   Jack White is a master.