Jack White Would Like the Swifties to Leave Him Alone

There are many reasons I would hate to be famous. One of them is that I’d be terrified of giving a totally mundane response to an interview and having it blow up because of a clickbait headline and the collective illiteracy of unhinged fandoms with nothing else to do. So, spare a thought this Tuesday for Jack White, who just wanted to to promote his new book and ended up eliciting the wrath of that most terrifying of sects: the Swifties.

In a conversation with The Guardian, White was asked, “Are any of your song entirely autobiographical?” Here is the full answer he gave:

“Not too much. Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself. Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song. If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”

See? A perfectly normal answer that shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest. Of course, the very mention of Swift’s name meant that the article was sliced up into clickbait by other publications, and soon the Swift fans were acting as though the ‘Seven Nation Army’ guy had pissed in Tay-Tay’s cornflakes. Inspiring the ire of Swifties is like shooting fish in a barrel, admittedly, but White was having none of it.

In a now-deleted Instagram post, White responded to the clickbaiting of his words and clarified his
not-at-all incendiary comments while condemning the system that makes people like him into memes of the day.

“I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together.

“What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing was that I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and it could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.

“Taylor and other singers have tremendous success writing in their own styles and I’m very happy for them that they’ve succeeded in engaging with so many music lovers in their own way.

“Just because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way. They should do what works for them, and they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that.

“These are the times when I am made less and less interested in doing interviews because in the age of this massive demand for click bait and content, any scrape of anything interesting or off the beaten path that can be turned into drama is swarmed over and spit out as bait, leading me to not want to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I’m too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this from so called ‘journalists’ and ‘editors.’

“This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”

One wonders if the internet is proud of its inability to understand nuance or if defending billionaires from the mildest of comments is the only thing that brings them joy. I’ve already seen Swifties claiming White had to drop her name because he needs to stay relevant, as if he isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Oh, he’s just a hater, right? Clearly he can’t stop thinking about delicate little Taylor, it’s actually romantic. It’s exhausting, actually.

White’s right in noting how clickbait is easily formed. It leaves interviewees terrified to give nuanced answers longer than two sentences for the fear that their words will be cut up and pasted into headlines with a few extra exclamation marks. All this will do is leave us with fewer interesting interviews and more celebrities skipping the entire process whenever possible.

I miss when artists could have normal and respectful conversations about their contemporaries without it inspiring an online hate campaign. Hell, I miss when we could get a bit of casual bitchery between friendly rivals and not have to worry about someone turning up on the celebrity’s door with a gun. Truly, what do you have to gain as a fan by being this tedious? Where is the pleasure in art if you only view it through the lens of petty victories and numbers? If you’re so truly bothered by the notion that not everyone thinks your favourite is the greatest and most important person on the planet, isn’t it time to take up a new hobby? Do you think Taylor cares that much about what he said? Actually, don’t answer that.