Seven Nation Army

Jack devised the riff at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne on 29 January 2002, during the Australian leg of a tour, and at first he kept it for a possible James Bond theme. He wrote the lyric the night before the recording and meant the song as a little experiment: a song with no chorus. The title started as a placeholder and comes from a young Jack mishearing the Salvation Army. Jack said the song is about gossip, about him, Meg and the people they were dating. The bass-like sound is a semi-acoustic guitar played through a DigiTech Whammy pedal, which dropped the pitch an octave. It was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.

XL Recordings wanted to release There's No Home for You Here, but Jack persuaded the label to put out Seven Nation Army instead. It came out on 17 February 2003 as the lead single from Elephant. It reached 76 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first entry, and number one on the Modern Rock chart for three weeks from 26 July 2003. It peaked at seven on the UK Singles Chart. It won Best Rock Song at the 2004 Grammys. Alex and Martin directed the video, one seemingly continuous shot through a tunnel of mirrored black, white and red triangles. It won Best Editing at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, and Meg's left wrist was broken, so her rack tom is placed to hide it.

The riff found a second life in sport. Fans of Club Brugge sang it at a Champions League match against AC Milan in October 2003. Roma fans learned it from Brugge in 2006, and Italy fans chanted it before the 2006 World Cup, and sang it in the streets of Rome after Italy won the final. Jack said he was honored that Italians had adopted the song as their own. It has been played at every UEFA European Championship since 2008 and before each match of the 2018 World Cup. NPR's Rick Karr called it arguably the world's most popular sports anthem. Rolling Stone ranked it at 286 on its 2010 list of the 500 greatest songs and 36 on its 2021 list, and at number 4 on its 2025 list of the 250 greatest songs of the 21st century so far. Rebecca Schiller of NME called the riff the most maddeningly compulsive bassline of the decade, though not played on a bass guitar.

Live

It was usually the last song or the encore of a White Stripes show. In Manaus on 1 June 2005, when something of a riot broke out outside the Amazon Theatre, the band was rushed back inside and played it. Of the 498 logged setlists that list songs, 259 include it. The earliest is from 7 April 2003 and the latest from 30 July 2007.