Jack White shares tribute to Meg White after journalist goes viral for calling The White Stripes drummer ‘terrible’

Jack White paid tribute to his former bandmate and ex-wife Meg White on Wednesday night, days after a journalist went viral for a ill-advised tweet criticizing The White Stripes drummer.

The singer and guitarist, who now performs as a solo artist, shared a photo of Meg on Instagram, along with a poem that imagines a world “without demons, cowards and vampires out for blood.”

The controversy began earlier this week when Lachlan Markay, a politics reporter at Axios, shared a now-deleted tweet calling Meg a “terrible” drummer. “The tragedy of The White Stripes is how great they would have been with a half decent drummer,” he wrote. “I’m sorry Meg White was terrible and no band is better for having s---ty percussion.”

The tweet caused an uproar on social media, as fans of The White Stripes gathered to dismiss and debunk the smear.

“(T)his right here is out of line,” Questlove, the legendary drummer and producer wrote on Twitter.

New Zealand indie rock band Unknown Mortal Orchestra shared a tweet praising Meg’s “elastic and intuitive sense of time.”

Even Jack White’s (other) ex-wife, Karen Elson, came to Meg’s defence, calling her a “fantastic drummer,” and making a not-so-subtle reference to the Will Smith-Chris Rock Oscars debacle.

Markay, whose Twitter account is now locked, eventually apologized for the tweet. “It was an over-the-top take on TWS and White as a drummer, and was, let’s face it, just truly awful in every way,” he wrote. “Petty, obnoxious, just plain wrong.”

The White Stripes formed as a garage rock duo in Detroit in 1997. Jack and Meg were married in 1996, but divorced a few years later. As the band gained momentum in the early 2000s, Jack claimed that he and Meg were siblings.

The band’s popularity skyrocketed with the release of “White Blood Cells” in 2001 and “Elephant” in 2003. “Seven Nation Army,” the first single from the latter album, reached the top of the Billboard rock charts. Earlier this week, the National Review called the track “The Song of the Century.”

As the band’s frontman and virtuosic guitarist, Jack White is often credited as the driving force of The White Stripes. But Meg’s drumming, characterized by its simplicity, is often described as the band’s backbone.

“The White Stripes could not exist without Meg,” Gilles LeBlanc, a music writer and White Stripes superfan told the Star. “It’s not so much her technical proficiency — she’d be the first to admit she’s no Neil Peart — but her sense of timing and her ability to anticipate what Jack would do next in a live setting, and match his intensity, was unparalleled.”

The White Stripes — who were among those nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2023 — broke up in 2011. And while Jack has gone on to perform as a solo artist and as a member of several other bands and projects, Meg has largely avoided the spotlight.

Unsurprisingly, she has not commented on this story.

Here’s what others are saying about Meg White:

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