Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	81/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Entertainment Weekly	C+
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
NME	8/10
Pitchfork Media	7.3/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin	B
The Village Voice	A−

Get Behind Me Satan is the fifth studio album by American alternative rock band The White Stripes, released on June 7, 2005, on V2 Records. Though still basic in production style, the album marked a distinct change from its guitar-heavy 2003 predecessor, Elephant. With its reliance on piano-driven melodies and experimentation with marimba on "The Nurse" and "Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)", Get Behind Me Satan plays down the punk, garage rock and blues influences that dominated earlier White Stripes albums. Frontman Jack White plays with different technique than in the past, replacing electric guitar with piano, mandolin, and acoustic guitar on all but a handful of tracks, as his usual riff-conscious lead guitar style is overtaken by a predominantly rhythmic approach. Rolling Stone ranked it the third best album of the year and it received the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 2006. As of February 2007, Get Behind Me Satan had sold 850,000 units in the United States.Get Behind Me Satan was the only White Stripes record not to receive a commercial release on vinyl, with only 600 promotional copies being released originally.

The album was recorded in the stairway and foyer of Jack White's house.

Jack White has explained that the title, Get Behind Me Satan, refers to a well-known line from the story of the Temptation of Jesus which is later repeated against the disciple Simon Peter, in Matthew 16:23 of the New Testament. In the King James Version, the quotation is slightly different: "Get thee behind me, Satan". Jack White has also stated in an interview on the radio show Fresh Air that "truth is the number one theme throughout the album Get Behind Me Satan." Relating that point to the album's multiple reference to movie actress Rita Hayworth, White said she became an "all-encompassing metaphor" for the album since she changed her last name from something that revealed her Latina heritage, and the way celebrity was cast upon her. White told Rolling Stone, "Rita Hayworth became an all-encompassing metaphor for everything I was thinking about while making the album. There was an autograph of hers—she had kissed a piece of paper, left a lip print on it, and underneath it said, 'My heart is in my mouth.' I loved that statement and wondered why she wrote that. There was also the fact that she was Latino and had changed her name. She had become something different, morphed herself and was trying to put something behind her. And there was the shallowness of celebrity when it's thrown upon you. All of that was going around in these songs; what had been thrown on me, things I'd never asked for. Every song on that album is about truth."

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