Jolene

This is not the Dolly Parton original, and the White Stripes make no attempt to hide it. Jack White's "Jolene" is a complete emotional transfiguration — where Parton's version is a desperate plea delivered with honeyed grace, White's is a howl from the floor of a burning building. The guitar is massive and raw, tuned down and played with the force of someone trying to break through the instrument rather than simply play it. Meg's drumming is lumbering and primal, anchoring the song in something almost prehistoric. Jack's vocal performance is the defining element: he doesn't sing so much as unravel, his voice cracking and shredding at the high notes, the desperation no longer polite but genuinely unhinged. The production, recorded live in a single take at a blues radio station, captures that recklessness perfectly — there are no safety nets, no polish, just two people playing like something is on the line. The lyric carries the same core as the original — a man begging a more beautiful woman not to take his partner — but stripped of any dignity, it becomes something more nakedly human. It belongs to the White Stripes' era of treating cover songs as possessions rather than homages. Play it when you want to feel what it means to lose something before it's even gone.