Jack White has an “obsession” with being hard on himself.
The former frontman of The White Stripes is known for being multi-talented, having played the parts of vocalist, guitarist and pianist for the band, as well as performing with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.
The 37-year-old released solo album Blunderbuss in April and explained he pushed himself to do the best he could.
“I had to figure out ways to stop it becoming the easy way out,” he admitted to British newspaper The Sun.
“I have an obsession with being hard on myself because I really need to feel proud of what I do. If I look back and see that I got the best engineers, that someone mixed the record for me, that it was just a bunch of people playing the parts, I couldn’t live with throwing my name on top of it. But now if someone says, ‘I really love that song, Jack’, I can enjoy the compliment because I know the conditions under which it was made.”
Whereas the musician liked to take on various roles during his time in The White Stripes, he decided to enlist some help for Blunderbuss.
The singer assembled the best of Nashville’s music scene, handpicking a significant number of women to provide vocals and instrumental accompaniment.
“It only takes one girl in the room to change the entire scope of all the testosterone,” he laughed.
“A couple of years ago, I would have imagined playing most of the instruments myself but it was never the case working on these songs. I’d try to shake things up by saying, ‘What if we only have female musicians today?’ This is by far the most people I’ve had play on one album, probably 20 altogether.”
