The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan

Get Behind Me Satan is the fifth studio album by American alternative rock duo The White Stripes, originally released in June 2005 via V2 Records.

The White Stripes were founded in 1997 and consisted of husband and wife duo Jack White (songwriter, vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards) and Meg White (drums and occasional vocals). After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit music scene, The White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002, as part of the garage rock revival scene. Their successful and critically acclaimed albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the single "Seven Nation Army" and its now-iconic guitar line becoming a huge hit.

The duo were noted for their low-fidelity approach to writing and recording. Their music featured a melding of garage rock, blues influences and a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance. The pair were also noted for their fashion and design aesthetic - a simple color scheme of red and white, which was used on every album and single cover the band released.

According to Jack White, Get Behind Me Satan deals with "characters and the ideal of truth," but in truth, the album is just as much about what people expect from the White Stripes and what they themselves want to deliver. Advance publicity for the album stated that it was written on piano, marimba, and acoustic guitar, suggesting that it was going to be a quiet retreat to the band's little room after the big sound, and bigger success, of Elephant. Then lead single "Blue Orchid" arrived. A devilish slice of disco-metal with heavily processed, nearly robotic riffs, the song was thrilling, but also oddly perfunctory; it felt almost like a caricature of their stripped-down but hard-hitting rock. As the opening track for the album, "Blue Orchid" is more than a little perverse, as though the White Stripes are giving their audience the required rock single before getting back to that little room, locking the door behind them, and doing whatever the hell they want.

As if the red herring that is "Blue Orchid" was't enough warning that Get Behind Me Satan is designed to defy expectations, "The Nurse"'s ironically perky marimbas and off-kilter stabs of drums and guitar make its domestic skulduggery one of the most perplexing and eerie songs the White Stripes have ever recorded. "My Doorbell", on the other hand, is almost ridiculously immediate and catchy, and surprisingly funky. Meanwhile, "Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)" turns cleverly structured wordplay and those fluttering marimbas into a summery, affecting ballad.

Despite Get Behind Me Satan's hairpin turns, its inspired imagery and complicated feelings about love hold it together. Though "the ideal of truth" sounds cut-and-dried, the album is filled with ambiguities; even its title, which shortens the biblical phrase "get thee behind me Satan," has a murky meaning-- is it support, or deliverance, from Lucifer that the Stripes are asking for? There are pleading rockers, like the alternately begging and accusatory "Red Rain", and defiant ballads, like "I'm Lonely (But I'm Not That Lonely Yet)", which has a stubborn undercurrent despite its archetypal, tear-in-my-beer country melody. Even Get Behind Me Satan's happiest-sounding song, the joyfully backwoods "Little Ghost", is haunted by loving someone who might not have been there in the first place.

Get Behind Me Satan is an eclectic mix, and while the album was made in just two weeks, it takes a while to unravel and appreciate. Get Behind Me Satan may confuse, but it’s an album showing the band pushing itself.

The album peaked at #3 on the US Billboard 200, #3 on the UK and #3 on the Australian Albums charts.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2022 reissue on 180 gram black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed insert, pressed in Europe via Third Man Records and Sony.