Few rock stars know how to build mystique like Jack White—from playing super obscure vintage guitars to color-coding his various musical projects. The coolest example dates back to 2004, when he recorded a single, pressed 100 vinyl copies, and hid them all inside random pieces of furniture.
Before we dive in, let’s tackle some backstory. Prior to his music career, White worked as a professional upholsterer in his native Detroit—first as a teenage apprentice, assisting friend and future bandmate Brian Muldoon. White opened his own shop, Third Man Upholstery, at age 21 and made enough money to pay the bills. But he also turned that business into a kind of art project, likely alienating potential repeat customers with his unique style.
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"I was so strange with it," he recalled during an interview on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. "I was doing sculpture as well. Everything became an art form with me—I was filling the inside of the furniture with poetry, and the bills I was writing in crayon. It would be yellow paper with black crayon: 'You owe me $300.' I would present it to them, and I’d deliver the piece in a yellow-and-black uniform in a yellow van that was an old Detroit fire-department van. People were like…"What?’"
Speaking to NPR in 2011, White said that he and Muldoon even started passing along notes to fellow upholsterers inside the pieces. "We’re the only ones who see the insides of this furniture," he said. "'We should have so many inside jokes and things we could write.’ You know, 'This guy was a jerk. He wouldn't pay for this.' We should be telling each other what was the story on these couches."
He and Muldoon formed the fittingly named garage-punk duo The Upholsterers in 2000 and released one official single, "Makers of High Grade Suites," that year (it’s since become a major collector’s item: As of this writing, record-resale site Discogs lists a price range of $250 to $1,500, with a median of $1,066.65). But that wasn’t the band's only recording: The Upholsterers reportedly celebrated the 25th anniversary of Muldoon’s shop by recording those 100 copies of a second single and stuffing the vinyl into furniture.
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"We even made it on clear vinyl with transparency covers—we thought you couldn't even X-ray it to see if it was in there," he told NPR. "I’m talking about—really, you could rip open a couch and think it's not there 'cause it's inside the foam—sliced inside the foam and slid in there. I mean, we really went to great lengths to make sure possibly no one would ever hear our record! But it's there. It's so great. It's there. There's [100] pieces of furniture out there that have those records, and maybe one day someone will find them."
According to White’s Third Man Records label, that miracle long-shot came true in 2014, when two people claimed they’d found separate copies of Your Furniture Was Always Dead … I Was Just Afraid To Tell You.
After White’s music career took off via The White Stripes—followed by his solo work, along with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather—he wasn’t able to focus as much on upholstery. But he’s never quit that pursuit. "While White may have stopped doing upholstery as a 'job' he’s never stopped his actual practice of the trade," reads a note on the Jack White Art and Design site. "In the intervening 20+ years Jack has always kept an operational upholstery shop in his house or on his property. Third Man Upholstery is now located in Nashville, TN."
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That skill has been a big part of his life in recent years, including in the early pandemic year of 2020, when, as he told O’Brien, he "worked on nothing but furniture, really." As he explained on the podcast, he even offered to redo the comedian’s furniture back when he launched Conan in 2010.
"I don’t have a lot of regrets in life," O’Brien said, "[but] one is: When we were doing our show at TBS, you contacted me, and I had no idea you were serious. You said, 'I’d like to do the upholstery. I’d like to make you your talk-show couch.' I was like, 'That’s so hilarious, man. That’s great.’ Later on, you were like, 'No, no, I was serious!'…I felt like it was such a lost opportunity to have a talk show where Jack White made my talk-show couch."
This article originally appeared in May.
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You may have missed the actual meaning behind these 5 popular songs.
'Every breath you ...' what? 5 classic songs where people totally missed the meaning
I’ve never been a "lyrics guy"—as long as the words sound pleasing to the ear, are relatively interesting, and aren’t evil or distractingly dumb, I don’t care all that much what the singer is going on about. I’m focused on the dynamics, the color of the arrangements, the rhythms, and harmonies. It’s only natural that I’d misinterpret some songs over the years, including ones that I’ve heard a thousand times while walking around malls and supermarkets.
I know I’m not alone. And I’d argue there are plenty of factors behind this phenomenon: Some people take lyrics too literally, while others only focus on hooky choruses and fail to notice nuance in the verses. Context can also blind us—if the music is danceable and upbeat, you might fail to catch darker elements in the words. Still, it can be hilarious and/or shocking when hugely popular tunes are misinterpreted on a mass scale.
Speaking of which: Let’s consult a viral Reddit thread titled "Any songs that are (or were) misunderstood by the public?" There's a mountain of suggestions—everything from '90s Latin-pop hits to '80s heartland-rock epics. But five of them felt especially perfect, so let’s dig a little deeper below.
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The Police - "Every Breath You Take" (1983)
As someone argues in the comments, "Pointing out the real meaning behind 'Every Breath You Take' has to have become so commonplace that it can't really be misunderstood anymore." Point taken. But still…this eerie Police track continues to be used in pop culture and everyday life as a signifier of romance—appearing as the soundtrack to TV slow dances and being arranged for weddings by string quartets. It’s easy to assume, at first glance anyway, that the song's protagonist is pledging their devotion—sticking around for "every breath" their partner takes. Instead, the atmosphere is more disturbing, given the whole "I’ll be watching you" thing. "I didn't realize at the time [I wrote it] how sinister it is," Sting told The Independent in 1993. "I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance, and control."
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Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the U.S.A." (1984)
"Born in the U.S.A." is one of Bruce Springsteen's signature songs—but also likely his most misinterpreted. As an official explainer video notes, the words "center around America's industrial decline and loss of innocence during the Vietnam War"—a message that became somewhat diluted as politicians began using the stadium-sized track for their campaigns. "Conservative commenters praised the song, and it earned the approval of both candidates in the 1984 presidential election," the clip's narrator adds. "Despite being adopted as a patriotic anthem, 'Born in the U.S.A.' is far from nationalistic." In a deep-dive piece, NPR quotes Springsteen talking about the song on stage: "'After it came out, I read all over the place that nobody knew what it was about,' he said before performing 'Born in the U.S.A' to a crowd in 1995. 'I'm sure that everybody here tonight understood it."
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Los Del Rio - "Macarena" (Bayside Boys remix) (1995)
Most Americans probably know the bubbly Bayside Boys remix of Los Del Rio's Spanish-language hit—it became the marquee moment of many a mid-'90s wedding reception and middle-school dance, thanks to its once-ubiquitous choreography. Maybe it's because people were too distracted by remembering the dance moves, but lots of us didn’t notice the lyrics. Of course, the chorus is in Spanish, which could have been a barrier for some, but the remix features English lines like the following: "Now don't you worry about my boyfriend / The boy whose name is Vitorino / Ha! I don't want him, can't stand him / He was no good so I, ha ha ha / Now come on, what was I supposed to do? / He was out of town, and his two friends were so fine."
"My little teenage mind was blown when I learned 'Macarena' was about cheating on a boyfriend with his friends," one Redditor wrote. "[Thank you] for the correction, it was 2 friends! Was sleep deprived writing this. I just did the moves, never questioned the lyrics." Yeah, gotta admit—this legitimately never crossed my mind either. Same with some of the people who took part in a reaction video for Distracify: "It’s definitely about dancing," one person said, before learning the truth. Another added, "I have no idea what it’s about still to this day. Please tell me it’s not something really dark."
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Baha Men - "Who Let the Dogs Out" (2000)
The party was nice. The party was pumpin'.' Until, that is, some "flea-infested mongrels" got involved. Back in 2000, you couldn't escape Baha Men's booming cover of "Who Let the Dogs Out"—it became a staple of sporting events everywhere, a kind of bookend for the Jock Jams era. "I know I definitely misunderstood 'Who Let the Dogs Out' to be about actual dogs," one Redditor wrote, likely speaking for most of the listening public. There's probably a good chance most of those people chanting the chorus weren't thinking about the song's real meaning, crafted by Trinidadian artist Anslem Douglas for his 1998 original. But if you pay attention to the lyrics, "Who Let the Dogs Out" has a feminist theme, telling the story of women who stand up against crass catcalling. "This is going to be a revenge song where a woman tells men, 'Get away from me—you're a dog,'" Douglas told Vice in a 2021 video history of the track. "[Offensive] slang was everywhere. It was just degrading women and calling them all sorts of derogatory names. I tried to do a social commentary as a party song, but the party song overshadowed the social commentary aspect of it."
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Hozier - "Take Me to Church" (2013)
One section of the Reddit thread is devoted to songs interpreted as pro-religion, when the truth is... well, more complicated. "'Take Me to Church' by Hozier is often used by Churches for things, and I’m like 'Oh, that’s not…,'" wrote one user. The bluesy, slow-burning ballad may use religious imagery. Still, it's about something more human—"[It's] this idea that powerful organizations use people’s sexuality in order to mobilize people against women, against gay people," the Irish songwriter told Genius in 2023. "And the justification behind that is often religious in nature." Hozier even isolated one particular lyric that highlights this misconception: "'She tells me, ‘Worship in the bedroom' [is] something tongue-and-cheek, a bit of humor to it, also revealing that this is not necessarily a traditional worship song," he said. "I think I still see my name put into playlists for Christian music, and I’m not averse to that—I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. But that line I would’ve thought would’ve disqualified it from something like that."