“The Denial Twist” by The White Stripes

"The Denial Twist" comes from Get Behind Me Satan, the White Stripes' fifth album from 2005, and later went out as its third single. It's Jack White dragging the duo's blues-rock stomp over to the piano bench: he plays piano and guitar and shakes the tambourine, while Meg White keeps a loose, thumping beat with bell and triangle rattling around the edges, the whole thing strutting like a dance craze at a party gone slightly sour. It gave them more trouble than anything else on the record, three takes in all, and Jack produced and mixed it himself, with John Hampton engineering.

The song is about how easily people fool themselves, and how the frame around a thing bends what we believe. Michel Gondry's video makes that literal, trailing the pair from a talk-show spot to a late-night drive home while the camera circles and their bodies stretch and warp.

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