Earlier this week, Jack White and his Third Man Records announced plans for something big: They’re going to be the first people toplay a record in space. This is just the latest in a long line of stunts by Third Man and White, who at this point might as well be called the Willy Wonka of records. He’s attached records to helium balloons, embedded holograms into vinyl, and recorded straight to vinyl on live TV. In an industry where fresh innovation seems impossible, White continues to insist that boundaries can be broken. Oftentimes, the ways he breaks them are more ridiculous than even we were able topredict in the past.
There’s no knowing how White will break records in the future, but we’ve got a few guesses.
Jack White’s New Album First to Be Exclusively Released As Reel-to-Reel Tape Album
When Beck released 2012’s Song Reader, Jack White was upset, claiming that Beck had stolen the idea while rifling through a pile of White’s assorted documents late one evening after the two had imbibed absinthe during a winter sleepover. (The sleepover was meant as a brainstorming session for a collaborative children’s album of Devo covers.) Years later, after cutting ties with Beck, White goes to work on a new Raconteurs album, All the Bees But You, which is released in limited edition as analog tape. No, not a cassette: a beautifully packaged copy of the recording tape to which the album was tracked.
Fans, angry at not being able to play the new music, lash out at White on Twitter. His response? “If you truly loved music you’d already own and listen to all of your songs on a reel-to-reel player.”
Jack White to Start Church of the Holy Analog, the First Record Label to Achieve Non-Profit Status
Inspired by Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Jack White decides that his love of analog technologies verges on the spiritual and could be the basis of a new religion. He and his cadre of Third Man employees get to work compiling a doctrine from White's various poems. The Church of Analog’s first outpost is located in a once-abandoned Detroit high-rise, which has been retrofitted to resemble a gilded version of the original Hotel Yorba. The Church’s main mission is to kick-start the recording industry through releasing vinyl albums, the sales of which will not be taxed. Congregants must wear only red, white, or black; Beck is explicitly forbid from joining.
Jack White to Livestream First-Ever Listening Party for Amazonian Dessana Tribe
In protest of the combative nature of the 2016 Rio Olympics, and also as a way to reclaim Brazil from the memory of his wedding to Karen Olsen there, Jack White and the Church of the Holy Analog venture deep into the Amazon to expose the proud people of the Dessana tribe to his newest Dead Weather album, Criminal Cicadas. This is believed to be the first time the tribe had seen music played by a carnival barker from a solar-powered record player, and the reaction is one of anger. When the album finishes, the tribe’s chieftain approaches White and asks, “Do you have any Justin Bieber?”
Jack White to Release First-Ever Album as Tortilla Chips
The world has known for years that Jack White is a big fan ofwell-crafted guacamole, especially when made with serrano peppers and Haas avocados. But, White says, something is always missing from his guac experience. The crunch of the tortilla chip just never sounds quite right. So, he approaches the board of Third Man Records with a radical idea: “What if we could make music while we eat guacamole?”
And so the SoundChip was born. Each bag of SoundChips is a unique album, filled with number-stamped tortilla chips that are made of 40 percent corn, 40 percent whole wheat, and 20 percent vinyl. When eaten in the correct order, you’ll hear a beautiful, brand new Jack White composition. When eaten out of order, you’ll hear a Black Keys song.
Jack White to Produce Fully Playable, Pork Pie Hat-Shaped Record
When Jack White first popped onto the scene with the White Stripes, he was about aesthetics, sure, but not much into fashion. His trademark look was pale man in white T-shirt and red jeans. That changed with the 2005 release of Get Behind Me Satan, when he graced that album’s cover dressed as a Vaudeville villain, complete with pork pie hat. After befriending the owners of the Portland-based Goorin Bros. hat company while filming his “Portlandia” cameo, he envisioned a world in which fans could not only wear T-shirts to show their love for a musician, but where they could also literally wear music as a hat. This resulted in the first ever fully playable pork pie hat-shaped record, which was released along with a record-playing hatbox.
Jack White to Embark on First-Ever Stationary Tour
Jack White,sick of traveling the road to play music and entering his Howard Hughes phase, announces that he’s holding a long series of performances in his own Nashville living room, billing it as the “Stationary Tour.” These performances will be limited to members of specific states, so that only fans from California will be able to purchase tickets for a show on August 15, for example, while fans from Ohio will have to drive to Nashville in October. Tickets for each show will only be purchasable with a valid driver’s license from the appropriate state. The idea, White says, is to provide unique shows for fans from all over the United States without actually having to leave the house, because why should musicians have to do all of the work?
Jack White to Debut New Record While Holding Up First Ever Solar-Powered Portable Record Player Outside of Meg White's Window
Third Man Records develops a solar-powered record player to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the White Stripes’ classic album, White Blood Cells. In order to build hype for the reissue, the player, and his ego—not to mention craving a stretch after filling his house with fans for a year—White announces a plan to stand outside Meg White’s Detroit home as he raises the record player above his head and plays “Fell in Love With a Girl” on repeat for 24 hours. Because Meg “doesn’t answer her phone,” this is the first time White has communicated with her in years.
Jack White Set to Release First-Ever PonoMusic Exclusive
After Neil Young appeared on “Fallon” to use one of Jack White’s contraptions to record a song straight to vinyl, White was inspired. Not by the patented Voice-O-Graph, but by Young, who performed the stunt in order to secure White’s endorsement of PonoMusic and PonoPlayer. (White has, in the past, defended Tidal. Probably because he’s a co-owner of Tidal.)
White failed to deliver on his initial promise, but after Young’s persistent texts (“C’mon man, don’t be a dork”), White finally relents, releasing his new album Malarkey as a PonoMusic exclusive. Aside from its novel release, Malarkey is unique in that it was the first time White recorded an album using exclusively electronic instruments, citing Kraftwerk, Wendy Carlos, and Kanye West as influences. “This is my most bodacious stunt yet,” White says. “AutoTune changed my life. I didn’t know I could put less effort into my singing than I already was.”
Malarkey is expected to increase PonoMusic sales by several hundred percentage points, but instead, the company’s content provider, Omnifone, is acquired by a shadowy business, and the PonoMusic store shuts down for the unforeseeable future.
Jack White to Play Series of One-Second Shows That, When Strung Together, Create One Really Great Live Performance of a One-Minute Song, Attempting to Break the Guinness World Record for “Song Comprising Largest Number of Distinct Performances in Order to Create a New, Distinct Performance”
In 2007, the White Stripes performed a literal one-note show in St. John’s, Newfoundland. This was documented in the White Stripes documentary Under Great Northern Lights, and was the cause of further controversy when White spoke out against the Guinness World Recordsorganization for being elitist after they’d insisted that John Cage’s performance of “4’33” was technically a shorter concert.
Not one to be squelched by bureaucracy, White hits the road solo, playing a series of 60 free shows across the United States. Later, White stitches the performances together to create a new song called “Sixty Second Record,” prints it to a 7” vinyl, and sends it via carrier pigeon to the Guinness World Records offices in London. After three months and no response from Guinness, White writes a poem called “Broken-hearted Pigeon.” In response, the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals informs White that his carrier pigeon likely died after a few days at sea, and that his record was probably lost in the ocean. Having failed to upload any of the performances to the Cloud, White cries out in anguish. That day marked the first time Jack White reconsidered the Cloud.