Elephant

The band first visited Toe Rag in July 2001. They came back that November to record It's True That We Love One Another, You've Got Her in Your Pocket and Hypnotize, while I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself was recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios. The rest was made between 24 April and 13 May 2002, according to reports, with engineer Liam Watson. The reported budget was 4,000 pounds. Jack produced it on an 8-track recorder with no computers, and said Toe Rag was freezing and uncomfortable, which made the band concentrate. Every song, B-sides included, was mixed in one day. A rumor that nothing newer than 1963 was used was promoted by lazy journalists, Jack said, and Watson dismissed it. Release had been planned for fall 2002 but was pushed to spring 2003 by the success of White Blood Cells.

Jack called it a guitar album, since he allowed himself solos. He made the bass-like sound of Seven Nation Army and The Hardest Button to Button with a DigiTech Whammy pedal dropping a guitar an octave. In the Cold, Cold Night gave Meg her first lead vocal, and Holly Golightly sang on It's True That We Love One Another, the only White Stripes song with singers other than Jack and Meg. The lyrics deal with what Jack called the death of the sweetheart. Meg called the album a tribute to England.

It entered the Billboard 200 at number six with first-week sales of 126,000, topped the UK Albums Chart, and sold over four million copies worldwide, the most of any White Stripes album. At the 2004 Grammys it won Best Alternative Music Album and was nominated for Album of the Year. David Fricke of Rolling Stone called it a work of pulverizing perfection, and John Mulvey of NME gave it 9 out of 10. Pitchfork's Brent DiCrescenzo disagreed, saying Jack aims to honor his heroes with too limited a palette. Rolling Stone placed it at 390 on its 2012 list of the 500 greatest albums and 449 in 2020. In 2023 Third Man released a mono remix titled Elephant XX, along with a deluxe edition that has live recordings from the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.