Album: The White Stripes (1999)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this early White Stripes stomper, Jack White keeps the lyric very simple, naming different people who might do the Astro, which presumably is a dance. In a 2002 interview with a 5-year-old named Lucas, he explained: "The Astro is whatever you do in secret that nobody knows about. Everybody does the Astro."
  • The last three lines make reference to Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who came up with different methods of transmitting electricity. Edison's method was Direct Current (DC), which was more accepted at the time. Tesla championed Alternating Current (AC), which eventually became the standard, but not before Tesla went insane. Jack White is a big-time science buff. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Bertrand - Paris, France
  • "Astro" is part of the first (eponymous) White Stripes album, released in 1999 when the two members, Jack and Meg White, were separated but still married (they divorced in 2000). They settled in as friends and co-workers, with Meg on drums and Jack doing pretty much everything else, including the songwriting. Meg stayed out of the spotlight, avoiding interviews whenever possible. What started as a little husband-and-wife band got very big a few years later when they signed a deal with the major label V2 and released their album Elephant, with the hit "Seven Nation Army."

Comments: 1

  • Darrell from Eugene, United StatesOne thing's fer sure: This song is not about the dog from "The Jetsons", nor is it about the first Chevy minivan since the Corvair Greenbriar, both of which make the Lumina APV comparable to a Rolls-Royce in comparison.
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