Songfacts®:

• Jimmy The Exploder is a monkey that blows stuff up. In the song, he jumps on the bed and detonates some green apples.
  
  In 2002, Jack White gave an interview with a 5-year-old boy who of course asked him about this song straightaway. White explained Jimmy's motivation:
  
  "The monkey 'Jimmy' has not stopped jumping on the bed for the last week but when he does it is only so that he can explode things that are not the color red. It is Jimmy's only power."
  
  He also explained that Jimmy really hates the color blue, which prompted a very logical follow-up question: If Jimmy wore a blue shirt, would he explode himself? White's reply:
  
  "Jimmy only wears his pair of red overalls and nothing else."
  
  You can probably guess the next question. What about bananas, the staple of a monkey's diet, which are, in fact, yellow.
  
  "Jimmy is the only monkey that lives off of an exclusive diet of red apples."
• The song is part of the self-titled debut album from The White Stripes, the duo of Meg and Jack White. Jack did the songwriting, sang lead and played electric guitar. Meg played drums and percussion. Even though there were just two of them, they could be very loud, especially when they played live.
  
  They were from Detroit, where this sound was celebrated. It wasn't so well accepted in the rest of America, but did find an audience in the UK, where The White Stripes got glowing reviews. Over the next few years, they smoothed out their sound a bit and caught on in America, particularly with their 2003 song "Seven Nation Army," which became quite popular at sporting events.
  
  Jack and Meg were married when they started the band but divorced in 2000. They kept going until 2011, when after a celebrated run of six albums, they called it quits. Jack became a solo artist and formed the bands The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.