“My Doorbell” by The White Stripes

"My Doorbell" is the White Stripes at their most gleefully stripped-down, a 2005 single from Get Behind Me Satan that trades the fuzz-box assault for a pounding piano and a loose, strutting beat. Jack White wrote it, produced it and mixed it himself, and the record sounds like a two-person band throwing a party in the living room: Jack on piano, guitar, marimba and tambourine, Meg hammering the kit, rattling bell, triangle and percussion, and adding her voice to his.

The pair cut it at Third Man Studios in March 2005, with John Hampton engineering, and it followed "Blue Orchid" as the album's second single, with "The Denial Twist" coming after. It's a bouncy, impatient little stomp with a soul-revue swing, and it proved the White Stripes could swap the riff for the keyboard without losing an ounce of swagger. The song even earned the duo a Grammy nomination in 2006 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, an odd category for a band this raw, and a sign of how far their reach had spread.

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