"Seven Nation Army" (The White Stripes)

I had mixed feelings about John Anthony Gillis (aka Jack White) the moment I heard “Fell in Love with a Girl” years ago.  (Not Meg, though.  She was drumming her heart out like a kid beating on garbage can lids, and I immediately loved her.)  But that Jack character.  Was he a genius with a gimmick?  Or was the gimmick his genius?
In time, I’ve realized that he’s no genius, but he's also no One Note Johnny who needed a candy-striped guitar to make a name for himself, either.  Truth is, he’s a music nerd with a hefty amount of respect for everything from Son House to Jimmy Page and a shit ton of creativity and talent, which have been honed in a very blue collar, workman-like way.  Which I respect.  So even when he rubs me the wrong way or seems to take himself too seriously, I still keep going back to check out what he’s up to.
On that note, “Seven Nation Army” may not be the best song he’s ever written, but it certainly is his most electrifying.  
In Davis Guggenheim’s 2008 documentary film It Might Get Loud, White discusses how the song got its start.  
Says White, “We were at a soundcheck in Australia, and I started playing that riff, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is really cool’.”  
But when White asked his friend Ben Swank, the co-founder of Third Man Records with White, what he thought of the riff, Swank's reaction was, “Eh.”
So, White filed it away, thinking that, if he ever had the opportunity to score a James Bond or spy film, the riff would be a perfect fit.  
Luckily, we got treated to it on the band's most consistent album, Elephant (2003).
When that ominous-sounding riff (which is played on guitar through a Whammy pedal, down one octave) rumbles through your speakers in the intro, it introduces a layer of complexity that isn’t on their preceding records.   Don’t get me wrong.  Working in their (purposely) constricted structure of drums + guitar with no/limited overdubs, they were able to create some pretty impressive shifting dynamics on other tracks, going from soft to loud and back again at the click of an effects pedal.  But on “Seven Nation Army,” the key is nuance, not just dynamics.  Whereas their earlier songs either flat-out scream for 3 minutes, or maybe have a quiet bit before bursting into a loud bit, “Seven Nation Army” simmers, like a hot pot on a stove that’s slowly building up steam, where you know the lid is going to blow clean off eventually.  
It’s that palpable tension and drama that keep me coming back to the song, again and again.