 This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The first 200 people to go to brilliant.org slash polyphonic will get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Over the last 20 years, Jack White has established himself as not only one of the greatest figures in Modern Rock, but one of the strangest. Between his devotion to color, his love for unique releases, and his constant self-mythmaking, White has gained notoriety for his eccentricity. But there's one quirk that may stand out most, his love for the number three. From song names to label names to changing his own name, the number three has had a significant impact on Jack White's entire career, both aesthetically and musically. Let's take a closer look. According to Jack White, he first became fascinated with the number three during his work as an upholsterer. He was working on stapling down the fabric for a sofa when he had an epiphany. He remembered the moment in an interview with The Guardian. I had three staples tamping the fabric down, left, right, and center, and I just stared at it for 10 minutes. It became hypnotic. This was the minimum amount of staples I could put to hold this fabric down. The number three exemplifies the almost iconic, mysterious perfection that cannot be attained. White realized that there were all kinds of things that tied back to the number three when you stripped them down to their bare minimum. Three is the minimum number of legs you need to make a table. Three primary colors make up the entire color spectrum. Even time itself is organized into three basic states, the past, the present, and the future. Then there's its relation to White's Christian faith. The Holy Trinity is one of the most important symbols in all of Christianity. And while these revelations were fascinating, they became more interesting when applied to music. When you trace rock and roll back to its blues origins, you find songs composed of three chords. The most common chords these songs use are the one, the four, and the five, also known as the tonic, subdominant, and dominant. These three chords form the basis of the 12 bar blues, one of the most ubiquitous song structures in all of music, and Jack White is no exception. He used the 12 bar blues in a number of songs across his career. His second solo album, Lazareto, featured three women, a 12 bar blues song with lyrical themes around the number three as well. Another one of Jack White's most celebrated songs uses both the 12 bar blues and lyrical themes around the number three, ball and biscuit. That song is a hard commitment to the 12 bar blues, building an entire seven minute piece around that simple structure and those three chords. Lyrically, ball and biscuit features one of the most important threes in Jack White's career, the third man. A year before ball and biscuit was released, Jack White founded his own record label, Third Man Records, named after a 1949 noir film. In addition to the name of his label, the branding of Third Man features Jack White's love for the aesthetic of threes. In his solo career, White has taken three vertical bars as his logo, a minimal look that drives home the power of the number. Aesthetically, threes were important in White's work with the White Stripes II. Their entire career was guided by a strict color code consisting of three colors, red, white and black. This color code can be seen in the band's biggest music video ever, Seven Nation Army, but more than just colors, that video uses triangles, further driving home the symbol of three. And then there's the gimmicks. Jack White loves working threes into his art in unexpected ways. On tour with the White Stripes in 2005, he changed his name to Three Quid. The White Stripes also released a limited run of three inch records played on custom turntables. In his solo work, Jack White released three videos for the Lazareto track that Blackbat Lycorish. He created a website where you could watch the main video but toggle through the others by pressing C or 3 on the keyboard. When performing on tour for Boarding House Reach, his microphone setup featured three mics. And of course, Jack White's website is jackwhite3.com, and that's a moniker that he usually signs his name with. And while these gimmicks are fun, the real power in threes comes from the music of the White Stripes. The White Stripes are rock stripped down to its three most basic parts. Melody, rhythm, and lyrics. Jack White considers those three things the cornerstones of songwriting, and it's part of what makes the White Stripes so incredible. Their early work is particularly minimal in this sense. A song like Stop Breaking Down captures raw energy with just three parts. Meg's drumming, Jack's guitar, and Jack's vocals. The number three is also built right into the music that the White Stripes play in their early career. Songs like Broken Bricks are built around power chords, a grouping of three notes. Power chords are one of the most basic structures in rock, and often one of the first things guitarists learn. By writing songs using these three note chords, Jack White is further emphasizing the importance of minimalism. Jack White's Love of Threes comes through strongest on The Big Three Killed My Baby, the third song of the White Stripes debut album. That song uses three chords throughout a song made of three verses and three choruses. On top of that, musical phrases made of threes are emphasized on both guitar and drums. On the cover of the single for that song, White even wears a shirt emblazoned with a big red three. The number three is more than just a fascination for Jack White. It's the very basis of some of the greatest works of his career. By looking for threes, White was able to strip so much of music bare and find the minimalism that gave him success early in his career. By maintaining devotion to his favorite digit, White has created a unique experience for his fans, who can explore his entire discography across three bands and solo work, and find threes everywhere. If you're like Jack White and you have a fascination with numbers, you should check out Brilliant. Brilliant is a site that helps you master complex topics by solving fun, challenging problems. So if numbers are your thing, you can brush up with their mathematical fundamentals and go on to more complex topics like number theory. Or if you want to learn more about the science behind music, check out the Waves course. In that course, you can learn all about the different kinds of waves and how they behave. When it comes to audio waves, this is fundamental science that's applied in all kinds of music technology, such as amplifiers and noise-canceling headphones. Brilliant can teach you all about this and more with step-by-step courses and challenges that'll make complex topics seem easy. Or if you just want to keep your brain sharp, you can try out their daily problems. Each day, Brilliant will give you a number of problems from across several fields that you can take a shot at solving. And if you can't figure it out, there's a community of thousands discussing these problems and writing their own solutions. If you want to give it a shot, head on over to Brilliant.org slash Polyphonic. Not only will that show support for my channel, but the first 200 viewers to follow that link will get 20% off their annual premium subscription. So please go check it out and learn something new today.