Songfacts®:

• This song discusses the distinction between real love and lust, with an inside look at Jack White's inner dialogue as he has a tryst with a girl who might still be dating his friend Bobby. The left side of his brain knows this is just a fling, but the right side is convinced he's in love - these lobes need to have a meeting and sort it all out!
• "Fell In Love With A Girl" packs a lot into its 1:50 run time. Jack White is singing the whole time, with two wordless breaks ("Aah, aah, aah, aah...") that could be considered the chorus. The group, which split in 2011, had just two members - singer/guitarist Jack and drummer Meg White - but they could raise quite a ruckus with their throwback garage rock sound typically devoid of bass.
  
  This being 2001, they didn't have much of a chance on the pop charts, which were dominated by R&B, teen pop, and Nickelback. But they did build a following in Detroit (Rock City!) and in the UK, where the finicky music press fawned all over them. In America, "Fell In Love With A Girl" was their first song to chart, peaking at #121 in May 2002, well over a year after it appeared on their third album, White Blood Cells. In the UK, where they had previously charted with "Hotel Yorba," it reached #21 in March 2002. The band caught on in America with their next album, Elephant, in 2003, thanks to the single "Seven Nation Army."
• The video for "Fell In Love With A Girl" is one of the most innovative of all time, made mostly with Legos.
  
  The director is Michel Gondry, whose mind works in mysterious ways - he did the bonkers videos for "Human Behaviour" by Björk and "Everlong" by Foo Fighters, and also directed the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.
  
  Gondry came up with the concept, presenting it to the duo by showing them a Lego creation of Jack White's head. A crew of 15 worked on the video for about two months, first shooting Jack and Meg going through the motions as storyboarded, then printing up pixilated images for each frame of film - 25 per second. Then they built the lego models and shot them in stop motion, combining those with some animated frames to piece it all together.
  
  Only white, black, blue, red and yellow bricks - the original Lego colors - were used. This was fitting because The White Stripes stuck to a color palette of white, black and red.
  
  At the MTV video music awards, it won for Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects, and Best Editing, but lost Video Of The Year to "Without Me" by Eminem.
• According to Jack White, before the video was released they pitched Lego on the idea of creating a special White Stripes Lego kit to include with special editions of the single, but the company refused, saying they didn't market to anyone over 12. This was long before they started selling $850 Millennium Falcons.
• The White Stripes never partnered with Lego, but in 2019 Jack White's Third Man Records started selling a "Fell In Love With A Girl" block kit so fans could build their on scenes from the video.
• The 16-year-old British soul singer Joss Stone covered this song for her 2003 debut album, The Soul Sessions, renaming it "Fell In Love With A Boy." Released as her first single, it outcharted the original in the UK, going to #18.
• Joss Stone told Q Magazine in 2007 that Jack White liked her cover, saying, "He told me he loved it and that when he plays it live, he plays my version rather than his own! How's that for approval! Cool bloke, Jack White!"
• During the 2010 Super Bowl, the United States Air Force Reserve ran an ad called "Grab Some Air" with music that sounded a heckuva lot like "Fell In Love With A Girl." The White Stripes duo saw red and posted a message on their website that read, "We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management. The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve's presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support."
  
  The musician who wrote the music for the commercial, Kem Kraft, told The New York Times that the similarity is entirely unintentional. He said: "I'm sorry it sounds the same. It wasn't my intention, truly, truly, truly. [If they] want to call me and talk to me, as far as I'm concerned, I'm responsible for this. Just me. I'm pretty much a one-man band here. It doesn't have anything to do with the Air Force. They didn't know anything, and I didn't know anything either."