Jack White: Seven Nation Army Lyric Reading

Seven Nation Army

Many points here are taken from contributors to the website Songmeanings.com. The guitar riff became famous when played at sports events, though no one much gets the meaning. It is a rare example of a marching beat, like martial rathe than religious music, though it is in fact uniquely both at once. I sang parts of this song this morning when I woke up. Some songs one has to live in order to understand. All fibs are told to protect the innocents.

   It is said on Songmeanings.com that the title comes from the way Jack heard the word “Salvation Army” when he was a child. But that is opposite the meaning. Meg White, the drummer, has said that “Jack basically wrote the song around the idea of this guy who comes into town and all his friends are gossiping about him. It gets to him so bad that he wants to leave town, and then he decides not to. Jack eventually did leave Detroit.” These things will give us a place to start in understanding the song, which even grows in intensity from studying the lyrics. Additions are bracketed, and some of the words seem a little off.

I’m gonna fight ’em off.

A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back.

They ‘re gonna rip it off.

Taking their time right behind my back.

And I been talk’in to myself at night because I can’t forget

Back and forth through my mind behind a lit cigarette.

And the message runnin’ through my eyes says leave it alone.

Don’t want to hear about it:

Every single one’s got a story to tell.

Everyone knows about it.

From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell.

And if I catch you comin’ back my way, I’m gonna sell it to you.

And that ain’t what you want to hear, but that’s what I’ll do.

And the feelin’ comin’ from my bones says find a home.

I’m goin to Witchita.

Far from this opera for ever more.

I’m gonna work the straw

Make the sweat drip out of every pore.

And I’m bleedin’ and I’m bleedin’ and I’m bleedin’ right before the Lord.

All the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more.

And the stains comin’ from my blood tell me go back home.

   “Leave it alone,” “find a home,” and “go back home” may be the lines where the lyric structure again provides a clue to a coherent reading. When the line is compared with that which occurred in the same place but a different stanza, the meaning becomes clear.

   This is, like “Blue Orchid,” a response to infidelity in love. This is “white” blues at its best, like Zeppelin, rarer, perhaps, in “black blues, like “Heard it through the Grapevine.” And like the Zeppelin song, “everybody ‘s gonna know” is an embarrassment, here the embarrassment of the fooled lover, as when these things appear in the tabloid press. “From the Queen… to the hounds” is an interesting way of describing the expanse of the public, considered “Everyone.” “No time for spreading rumors / Time has come to be gone.” “Their gonna rip it off. Taking their time right behind my back” is then obvious. “Leave it alone” is, then the same as “Get behind me,” as will appear momentarily. “Don’t want to hear about it / Every single one ‘s got a story to tell.” Ones own romantic suffering is incomprehensible and nothing, like dust in the wind to others, who cannot hear or comprehend the cries of the agony of the true lover. But it may be the writer who no longer wants to hear the tale that many have to tell him. “Sell it to you” might just be gangster talk for murder, the kind found in the ballads, or in Hendrix’ “Hey Joe.” (The line could also mean he is going to lie to her, or him, the third party, but this is the lesser possibility. One lyric prints “serve it to you, like divorce papers, but that is not the word on the video). His rage is the temptation. Instead, He wants to go to Wichita, far away from the soap opera things of his Detroit love world, as he shows the mitten of Michigan in the video. “Work the straw” might refer to cocaine, as one suggests on Songmeanings, but it is more likely literally straw, as in, lose oneself in hard farm work in the straw fields of Kansas or Nebraska. Or maybe it was the fields around Nashville.

   When he sings “bleed’in” on the video, he wipes tears. But now the poetry gets real: Bloodsweat occurs in the scripture, and is known to occur literally, to humans in times of great strain. It may be at the edge of his humanity, and again, the agony of the lover is not understood, or is beyond communication, as the agony in the garden was for that one, in analogy. He is bleeding “right before” or into the presence of the Lord. This is the imago Dei, and the lovers death in soul is like the crucifixion by analogy. Simon’s words trickle down from a wound he has “no intention to heal.” “All the words are gonna bleed from me, and I will think no more.” The blood is his thought and poetry. As the message from his eyes said “leave it alone,” his poetry, the stains from his blood, tells him to go back home. The root of the rage of infidelity is related to this goal of love, for which one does not need the particular one loved. The “Salvation Army” has indeed prevailed over the rage that opens the song. But that is not the “Seven Nation Army” at all. One might consider Revelation.