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Jack White – Get In the Mind Shaft Lyrics 7 years ago
I think it's about a musical awakening, like when you first start figuring out how to play an instrument or write a song and then suddenly a whole new world opens up to you. The alternate lyrics on the vinyl record version are about the same kind of thing, but a musical awakening that happens much later in life; it's about looking at yourself and realizing you don't fully recognize the person you've become, thinking that maybe your creative process has become too depersonalized or too commodified, and then deciding it's time to let yourself go and try something completely new, to let yourself enter a universe you don't understand yet. Also, this might be reaching, but it feels kind of apt or intentional that digital music, being the younger/newer format, has the version of the lyrics that's about a young kid, while the older format has the version that's about an adult trying to get out of the ways they've been stuck in.

submissions
Jack White – Abulia and Akrasia Lyrics 7 years ago
A version that's a little easier to parse:

I renounce wholeheartedly
in this extreme oath of renunciation
that which I reject so strongly
uncompromisingly unrepentant
unforgiving and stubborn
I renounce with unwavering politeness
in this solemn refutation
this most earnest rejection
I shall not invalidate
that which I state irreversibly
but I state it so gently
that you cannot resent me
for this humble request of my company
so with time left permitting
and while we're still sitting
may I please have another cup of tea?

submissions
Jack White – Hypermisophoniac Lyrics 7 years ago
For the most part this looks like it's just about someone with misophonia (or, a little more metaphorically, someone who can't help getting scared of or upset about insignificant things), but the chorus I'm not sure about. I'm thinking it might be a reference to sound banks? Like, ain't nowhere to run when someone's using every sound available to them and being as loud as possible.

submissions
Jack White – Connected by Love Lyrics 7 years ago
So I know Jack has said this one is fictional, but if I may bend the definition of "fictional" a little bit, I kind of feel like this is about the fans. IIRC, Jack was getting quite a bit of negative publicity in 2014-2015, and this could be about needing a way to get his feelings out into music ("relieve me and put it up on your shelf", i.e., let me record it and I hope you'll buy it) but also consciously knowing that it was time for him to take a break. The actual phrase "we're connected by love" might be a reference to being connected by music, emotion, and humanity, and the hope that that connection still exists even though he hasn't released anything in a while. Having this as the first song on the new record, as well as the first single, could be a way of saying "I'm sorry I was so inactive for so long, I hope you still care about me, because I still care about you guys".

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