“Blue Orchid” by The White Stripes

"Blue Orchid" throws open the White Stripes' 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan and was the first single off it, sent to American rock radio on April 18 and out in the world just six weeks after Jack White wrote it. You can hear the haste. It's a fuzzed-out, shrieking blast, White's guitar squealing like it's been wired up backwards while Meg White pounds the kit with blunt, primal thuds.

For all the racket, the song carries a grievance: White is pining for the old-fashioned entertainment business he loves and bristling at the turmoil the newer industry has put him through. He produced and mixed it himself, with John Hampton engineering, Adam Hill assisting and Matthew Kettle recording, and the credits list Jack on marimba, piano and tambourine and Meg on bell and triangle as well as the usual guitar and drums.

It topped the Canadian singles chart in June 2005, reached number nine in the UK and number seven on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, and went top 20 in Denmark and Norway. Floria Sigismondi directed the video, which Yahoo! ranked 21st among its "Top 25 Spookiest Videos" that year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.