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Elephant
Studio album by The White Stripes
Released	April 1, 2003
Recorded	November 2001, April 2002
Genre	Garage rock, blues-rock
Length	49:56
Label	V2 Records (U.S.) XL Recordings (Europe)
Producer	Jack White, Liam Watson
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link BBC (favorable) link NME (9/10) link Pitchfork Media (6.9/10) link PopMatters (very favorable) link Robert Christgau link Rolling Stone link Spin (favorable) Tiny Mix Tapes link
The White Stripes chronology
White Blood Cells (2001) Elephant (2003) Get Behind Me Satan (2005)

Elephant is the fourth album by American rock band The White Stripes, released in 2003.

The White Stripes recorded Elephant in two weeks during 2002 in London's Toe Rag Studios. Jack White produced the album with deliberately antiquated equipment, including an eight-track tape machine and pre-1960s recording gear.^[1]

The album has been released with at least six different versions of the front cover—different covers for the CD and LP editions in the U.S., the UK and elsewhere.^[2] To give an example, on the U.S. CD edition Meg White is sitting on the left of a circus travel trunk and Jack is sitting on the right holding a cricket bat over the ground, while on the UK CD edition the cricket bat touches the ground and the image is mirrored so that their positions on the amplifier are reversed.

In an interview with Q Magazine in 2007, Jack White said, "If you study the picture carefully, Meg and I are elephant ears in a head-on elephant. But it's a side view of an elephant, too, with the tusks leading of either side." He went on to say, "I wanted people to be staring at this album cover and then maybe two years later, having stared at it for the 500th time, to say, 'Hey, it's an elephant!'"

The White Stripes had been gaining momentum with their previous three albums and were generally lauded in critical circles. Upon its release, critical response to this album was overwhelmingly positive, and many critics hailed it as the one of the defining events of the 2000s garage rock revival.^[1]Uncut magazine remarked that "Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record."^[3] David Fridge (with Rolling Stone) called it "a work of pulverizing perfection," adding, "It will be one of the best things you hear all year."^[1] and All Music Guide said the album "overflows with quality".^[4] Critics also commented on the development of the band. NME noted that "The eloquence, barbarism, tenderness and sweat-drenched vitality of Elephant make it the most fully-realised White Stripes album yet."^[5] PopMatters said the album cemented "their evolution from Blind Willie McTell cover band with a pop sensibility to full-fledged, honest-to-goodness rock 'n' roll gods."^[6] The album enjoys a metacritic rating of 92.^[7] Negative critique, though rare, was centered around the "gimmicks" that surround the music, most notably, the White Stripes' insistence on being called siblings. "So maybe it's time to drop the enigmatic charade," Lorraine Ali (with Newsweek) pleaded, although she concluded, "Elephant still sounds great."^[8]

The album debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom and reached #6 on the Billboard Album Charts in the United States. The album won Grammys for Best Alternative Album and Best Rock Song ("Seven Nation Army"). In 2003, the album was ranked number 390 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It was also placed thirty-ninth in the UK's Channel 4's 100 Greatest Albums of all time.^[9] In December 2003, NME magazine made it their Album of the Year.

The song "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" is featured in the videogame skate. for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

All songs written by Jack White, except where noted.

1. "Seven Nation Army" – 3:51
2. "Black Math" – 3:03
3. "There's No Home for You Here" – 3:43
4. "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 2:46
5. "In the Cold, Cold Night" – 2:58
   • Featuring Meg White on lead vocal.
6. "I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" – 3:20
7. "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" – 3:39
8. "Ball and Biscuit" – 7:19
9. "The Hardest Button to Button" – 3:32
10. "Little Acorns" (Mort Crim, J. White) – 4:09
    • Featuring Detroit newscaster Mort Crim delivering the opening monologue.^a[›]
11. "Hypnotize" – 1:48
12. "The Air Near My Fingers" – 3:40
13. "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" – 3:17
14. "It's True That We Love One Another" – 2:42
    • Three vocal parts on this track: Jack, Meg, and Holly Golightly of the British band Thee Headcoatees.

• Jack White – guitar, piano, vocals
• Meg White – drums, vocals

• Mort Crim – commentary
• Holly Golightly – vocals
• K. Johnson – author
• Ian Montone – navigator

• Elephant at Discogs (UK version)
• Elephant at Discogs (U.S. version)