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The Hardest Button to Button

"The Hardest Button to Button"
Hardestbuttoncover.gif
Single by The White Stripes
from the album Elephant
Released December 9, 2003
Format CD, 7"
Recorded April 2003
Genre Garage rock
Length 3:32
Label XL Recordings
Writer(s) Jack White
Producer(s) Jack White
The White Stripes singles chronology
"I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself"
(2003)
"The Hardest Button to Button"
(2003)
"There's No Home for You Here"
(2004)

"The Hardest Button to Button" is a 7" single by the American alternative rock band The White Stripes. It is the third single from their album Elephant. The cover of the single is an allusion to the graphics of Saul Bass, seen in the movie posters and title sequences of films such as Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm. The cover also alludes to Jack White's then-broken index finger and his obsession with the number 3.

Jack White says that the song is about a child trying to find his place in a dysfunctional family when a new baby comes.

The music video for "The Hardest Button to Button" is the third White Stripes video directed by Michel Gondry, after "Fell in Love with a Girl" and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" (two years later, he would direct the music video for "The Denial Twist").

The video utilizes pixilation animation to create the effect of dozens of drum kits and guitar amplifiers multiplying to the rhythm of the song as Jack and Meg perform. For example, in one sequence, Meg is seen playing the bass drum at a PATH train station. On every beat, a new drum materializes just ahead of her and she instantly appears behind it to play that beat, leaving all the previous drums vacant. This effect was achieved by first setting up a trail of bass drums. Then, Meg would be filmed performing a single beat on the last drum in the line, which would then be removed; she would move back one drum, play another beat, and so on. The final video is edited to include the drum beats with the sequence reversed, making it appear as if the drums are being added to the beat, appearing out of thin air. Gondry used 32 identical Ludwig drum kits, 32 identical amplifiers, and 16 identical microphone stands during the shoot. The drum kits were donated to a music school after the shoot.


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