In February 2011, the White Stripes announced they were no longer going to tour or release new music. The decision wasn’t based on “artistic differences” or “health issues”; instead, the decision was “mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way”.
In the ensuing years, vocalist-guitarist Jack White cultivated a wildly successful solo career and continued working sporadically with his other bands, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. Drummer Meg White, meanwhile, retreated from music, preferring instead to be a private citizen. In recent years, she politely declined to speak for a 2023 Elle story and didn’t attend the White Stripes’ 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
As a culture, we’re fascinated by musicians who stay out of the spotlight. Over the years, journalists have tried to track down elusive artists such as Cleveland singer-songwriter Bill Fox (who actually gave several interviews last year) or Suburban Lawns’ Su Tissue. We’re not entitled to know details of their personal lives, of course, which is why this fascination occasionally slides into pernicious territory – like the now-deleted Daily Mail article that recently attempted to find Meg but instead stalked the wrong person.
Meg had an uneasy relationship with being a public figure during the White Stripes’ active existence. She was notoriously shy, once telling NPR about the advice a teacher gave her: “She wrote in my yearbook to speak softly and carry a big stick, you know? And I took to that heart.” The White Stripes also canceled tour dates in 2007 due to Meg’s “acute anxiety”, something Jack spoke about candidly and empathetically later. “To go full-speed from a dead-halt is overwhelming, and we had to take a break.”
Such vulnerability made Meg enormously relatable, someone you wanted to root for to succeed. But people also feel protective of her because she was often treated so poorly when the White Stripes were an active band. Meg started playing drums in 1997 at Jack’s behest – the first song the duo played together was David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream – skipping formal music lessons in favor of more unvarnished creativity.
This irked people who expected virtuosity. A now-archived 2006 article – Why We Can’t Forget Meg White – And the Sexist Way We Talked About Her – outlined the sexism in exhaustive detail, from Pitchfork calling her drumming “pancake-handed” to a 2007 Pearl Jam message board thread titled “Official Meg White can’t play thread.” (Both jabs are still online.) Long after the White Stripes ceased recording, the negativity persisted. In 2023, a journalist apologized after intense outcry to his offhand comment that “the tragedy of the White Stripes is how great they would’ve been with a half decent drummer.”
The observation is especially absurd because the White Stripes were great precisely because of her approach to drumming. She and Jack complemented each other perfectly; her combination of steely focus and serene nonchalance balanced his more outgoing presence. “Meg is the best part of this band,” Jack told Rolling Stone in 2005, adding: “When she started to play drums with me, just on a lark, it felt liberating and refreshing.”
Indeed, Meg was a powerful player who propelled the White Stripes’ blues/punk/garage rock hybrids with a steady hand. Her thumping kickdrum propels The Hardest Button to Button like a thundering metronome; the garage-rock classics Fell In Love With a Girl and Hotel Yorba lift off due to her buoyant, ramshackle playing. Later-era singles like Icky Thump and Blue Orchid boast a heavier edge thanks in no small part to Meg’s seething, sizzling grooves.
And, unlike other duos, the White Stripes didn’t hire additional musicians to flesh out their live sound. It was always Meg and Jack against the world – her forceful rhythmic backbone anchoring his wild-hair extroversion, whether a grimy guitar line, a soulful organ, antique piano part or even a lively marimba. Criticized at the time, the White Stripes’ Glastonbury 2005 performance looks like a revelation through a modern lens; Meg looks unflappable, even ecstatic, as she mouths along with the words and steers the set. On the pair’s ominous cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, her light-touch cymbal hits generate tension for much of the song – until it explodes as she ferociously attacks her entire drumkit, mirroring the moment when the narrator collapses in anguish.
“It will always be us two,” Jack told Rolling Stone in 2005. “I will never do the White Stripes with another drummer. She’ll never do it with another guitarist.”
He’s kept his word: when the duo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jack didn’t perform in Meg’s absence. Instead, Twenty One Pilots whacked through Seven Nation Army, while Olivia Rodrigo and Feist picked through a delicate We’re Going To Be Friends. However, Meg sent a note of gratitude that Jack read; he also noted she helped write and shape the speech he gave. “A lot of punctuation corrections too,” he quipped. “She’s pretty good at that.”
With this honor, Meg became just the third female drummer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after Gina Schock of the Go-Go’s and Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker. Like those two artists, Meg reinforced the idea that you could be in a band, create your own style and carve out your own destiny. She didn’t wait around for permission to be an artist.
Meg’s iconoclastic music career and drumming skills are finally receiving their due, in no small part because younger fans and musicians aren’t saddled by the same sexist cultural baggage. Speaking to Elle in 2023, Rodrigo noted Meg’s playing and the White Stripes themselves taught her “the value of simplicity in music … that a truly great song doesn’t need to have crazy production or layers of sound. It just needs to move you. You can sense her passion in every song she plays.” But in the end, Meg proved you could be a rock star on your own terms – both during and after your music career.
