The White Stripes performed last night on the last episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. This was kind of a big deal, because they’ve been on hiatus for a while, and their last tour ended rather abruptly when Meg White came down with a serious case of anxiety.
I’ll save my remarks for Conan, whom I love, for another time. I’d like to focus on this performance in this post.
There has been a lot of talk about what this performance meant for the Stripes. There have also been rumors floating around for a while now suggesting that the Stripes might break up, since Jack White is now performing with the Raconteurs. When it was announced that the White Stripes would be performing on Conan’s last show, people had some renewed hope that they would announce another album, maybe even another tour… but after seeing this performance, I think it might be their time to call it quits.
I love the White Stripes. They’re my favorite band by leaps and bounds. And this performance was, in my opinion, their quiet little goodbye. The whole song felt very melancholy to me. There were some moments when they chuckled, and there were others where Jack looked like he was on the brink of tears. This performance was exactly what the Stripes always have been: unique, simple, minimalist, and imperfect, but above and beyond all, beautiful.
We may not see them again, and there’s no such thing as a good way to say goodbye to a loved one. And yet, if this was a goodbye, then as far as goodbyes go, it was a beautiful one. A unique, simple, minimalist, imperfect, and beautiful goodbye.
