Jack White and his approach to songwriting: “I don't want to do what Taylor Swift does”

In an interview with "The Guardian" published on the occasion of the release of the book "Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1", Jack White explained his approach to songwriting, distancing himself from the autobiographical model now widespread in pop music.

The musician stated that he has no interest in directly recounting his private life in his songs, as often happens with artists like Taylor Swift or Lily Allen. Personal experience is present in his lyrics, but it gets filtered and transformed into characters and stories: when an event is particularly painful, he prefers not to lay it bare explicitly. Instead, he inserts only a fragment of that experience and reworks it narratively, a method that allows him to understand himself better through different perspectives.

White also addressed the relationship between music and politics. Although he has long been a critic of Donald Trump, he explained that he has no interest in writing songs that are openly polemical or that name names. Citing Bob Dylan and "Blowin' In The Wind", he stressed the effectiveness of an allusive approach, one in which the message stays implicit, entrusted to storytelling rather than direct statement.

The book, edited by archivist Ben Blackwell, collects writings by White from outside the White Stripes alongside poems, jottings and notes drawn from his notebooks. The artist explained that he wanted to test the waters before publishing a volume devoted entirely to poetry, a label he fears might come across as too pretentious.

Meanwhile, White is also preparing for his debut in the visual arts: his first exhibition, "These Thoughts May Disappear", will open on 29 May at the Newport Street Gallery in London, the exhibition space founded by Damien Hirst, and will run through 13 September.

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