Let's Build A Home

Album: De Stijl (2000)
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Songfacts®:

  • The intro is a recording of Jack White when he was about 6 years old. He's talking to his mother and his older brother, who are encouraging him to sing a song he had been singing earlier. He complies, singing:

    I wish I had a little red box
    To put my best friends in
    I'd take them out and
    Put them back again


    According to white, it was "some sort of religious song" he was trying to sing, and he got the lyrics wrong. It was supposed to be:

    I wish I had a little red box
    To put the Devil in
    I'd take him out and punch, punch, punch
    And put him back again


    This is a variation of the second verse of a Christian children's song called "Little White Box." The first verse goes something like:

    I wish I had a little white box
    To put my Jesus in
    I'd take Him out and kiss kiss kiss
    And share him with my friends
  • Part of the second White Stripes album, De Stijl, "Let's Build A Home" is one of the group's minimalist songs, running just 1:58 including the 25-second intro. They were a duo who could make quite a racket between Jack's distorted guitar and Meg's insistent drumming.

    There's not much to the lyric, which finds Jack singing about getting some bricks and building a home. On songs like this one, he kept the words very simple, almost like children's songs.
  • "Let's Build A Home" is a lesser-known early track from the White Stripes, but it often popped up in their setlists over the years. They played it during their weeklong run as musical guests on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in April 2003.

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