The White Stripes ‘Greatest Hits’ Traces Their Story from Humble Beginnings to Superstardom (Listen)

It’s easy to forget that The White Stripes weren’t exactly an “overnight success.”

Despite seemingly arriving like a bolt of lightning with 2001’s White Blood Cells, which featured the immediate, attention-grabbing “Fell in Love with a Girl” and its memorable Michel Gondry-directed video, that was actually Jack & Meg White‘s third full-length album, not their first.

That album quickly made the White Stripes bona fide “buzzworthy” stars and put in action a career that would turn them into legends.

Today, Dec, 4, 2020, the White Stripes’ first-ever greatest hits collection was released, and the 26-track set does a great job tracing their entire career, not just the biggest and brightest hit singles (of which there were many from “The Hardest Button to Button,” “The Denial Twist,” “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground,” and, of course, “Seven Nation Army.”

Click here to pick up Greatest Hits on CD from our Rock Cellar Store
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Out now via #ThirdManRecords & @ColumbiaRecords #TheWhiteStripes Greatest Hits, the first official anthology of recordings from the iconic rock duo, Jack & Meg White, available digitally WW and on vinyl in the US and CD in US & Canada. https://t.co/bt5Hq3rhzG#twsgreatesthits pic.twitter.com/rbxt9cXjED

— Third Man Records (@thirdmanrecords) December 4, 2020

Greatest Hits also came with a new video for “Let’s Shake Hands,” which was actually the White Stripes’ first recording, appearing on their 1998 debut 7″:

Jack & Meg White accomplished quite a lot throughout their time together, which ended with 2007’s Icky Thump and a few quiet years afterward, eventually culminating in an official dissolution in 2011 (at which point Jack embarked on a prolific solo career that continues to this day).

The new Greatest Hits set tells their story quite effectively, tracing their beginnings in the blues/rock scene of Detroit in the late 1990s through their path into superstardom. Give it a listen below and get a sense of who they were, from start to finish.