Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
From Stripespedia
Contents |
Releases
- Elephant (2003)
Other Appearances
Credits
Performers
- Jack White: electric guitar, vocals
- Meg White: drums, tambourine (presumably)
Production
- Originally recorded by The White Stripes.
- Written by Jack White.
- Produced and mixed by Jack White and Liam Watson.
- Recorded November 2001/April 2002 at Toe Rag Studios in Hackney, East London.
Meaning
- Jack White: "I suppose it is just about this tongue-in-cheek take on male and female relationships when things are bothering girls about headache medicine. Aspirin, Tylenol and things like that. It's like, men can take anything, like a sugar pill, and it will make their headache go away, but there is always some sort of special care for women. It is sort of a metaphor for taking the time to care for someone, I guess."
Band Quotes
- Jack White: "It came from a discussion between me and other guys about when girlfriends have headaches and won't take certain medicines 'cause it has "something in it." Guys will swallow anything. It's because women don't have faith. It was supposed to go on White Blood Cells. It was no fun at all to sing. Meg had a lot of problems with it. I actually took a lyric out because I thought it was too harsh -- "I don't have the patience to watch you battle every miniscule disease.""
- Jack White: "It's about the irritation I was constantly getting with females arguing about headache medicine. Like, 'Oh, I can't take Tylenol, it doesn't work.' Whereas a guy would just take anything, he doesn't even think about it. It seemed like this tiny thing was a big, telling sign of feminine behavior. In my eyes. A guy can just put his coat on and run out the door, but a girl has to take 25 minutes waddling around looking for her purse or whatever. Not that one's better than the other, but they're different."
- Jack White: "I remember us actually doing that in Memphis and quickly abandoning it -- I don't know why. I love the way this came out. It didn't... I'm trying to think what didn't come out until we mixed it down. I felt something was wrong. It was too slow or something was going wrong with it. When we mixed it down, it came out alright. And the breaks really are nice, Meg's hi-hat and everything, I like that a lot."
- Jack White: "It is about really knowing what you want to say, what message you want to convey, to have control over your words. At the very last moment, I changed the words “I don’t have the patience to watch you battle every miniscule disease” in the song “Girl, You have No Faith in Medicine” on the new record. I did it because it was written about headaches, but I realized it may be interpreted as if I was putting down people who struggle with other serious illnesses. At the same time, it was important for me to inject a certain measure of mystery in what I was doing, for it not to be too obvious. Therefore, I am sometimes reluctant to discuss individual lyrics. An artist does not write down in the edge (of the painting) what he wanted to say with it, what it should mean."
Trivia
- Live guitar: The Airline in standard tuning.
Lyrics
Girl, you have no faith in medicine. Oh, girl, you have no faith in medicine. Acetaminophen, you see the medicine, oh, girl. Is there a way to find a cure for this implanted in a pill? Is it just the name upon the bottle which determines if it will? Is the problem you're allergic to a well-familiar name? Do you have a problem with this one if the results are the same? Well, strip the bark right off a tree, and just hand it this way. Don't even need a drink of water to make the headache go away. Give me a sugar pill and watch me just rattle down the street. Oh, girl, you have no faith in medicine. Oh, girl, you have no faith in medicine. Acetaminophen, you see the medicine, oh, girl.
