Nandi Bushell Screams, Bashes Her Way Through White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’ in Tribute to Meg White
Tween drumming sensation Nandi Bushell weighed in on the Meg White drumming non-troversy over the weekend in the only way she knows how: by bashing her heart out on her drum kit. “#MegWhite is my #Hero. The first day I got drums my dad showed me the video of #sevennationarmy,” wrote the 12-year-old alongside a video of her screaming her heart out and blasting away at a set emblazoned with hearts and the name “Meg” while playing the White Stripes‘ “Seven Nation Army,” one of the most-played sports pump-up songs on the planet.
The tweet also included archival footage of a tiny Nandi assaulting her baby drum kit as her dad plucks out the song’s iconic riff in the family playroom and she and her younger brother freak out as Nandi kicks over the set. “The first time I played drums I jammed on ‘Seven Nation Army,'” read the on-screen caption. “Thank you for the greatest rock songs ever! We love you Meg!!!!”
The young drummer who has turned the heads of everyone from Dave Grohl to Tom Morello added some more praise in a pair of follow-up tweets, in which she wrote, “The more I learn about music, the more I realise that songs, and art, are created to wake emotions deep inside the soul. No matter how fast my fills get or number rudiments I learn. If I can’t write a song that moves people, then can’t call myself an artist.”
In addition to saying that Jack White and Meg wrote some of the best songs in rock history, Bushell noted that they moved her as a five-year-old “to want to play the drums and still move me today! My screams are for you Meg! you are and always will be my role model and hero!”
Bushell’s post came a week after political journalist Lachlan Markay opined in a since-deleted tweet that “the tragedy of the White Stripes is how great they would’ve been with a half decent drummer… I’m sorry Meg White was terrible and no band is better for having a sh—y drummer.”
That unprovoked broadside against the timekeeper — who has all but vanished from public view since the duo called it quits in 2011 — drew a torrent of support for Meg from, among others, Roots drummer Questlove, Against Me’s Laura Jane Grace, Jack White’s ex-wife singer-model Karen Elson and many others. Markay has since apologized for the comment he said was “petty, obnoxious, just plain wrong.”
Like Bushell, Jack White posted his own mic-drop response — albeit without mentioned Meg directly — in the form of a poem that opened with the lines:
To be born in another time,
any era but our own would’ve been fine.
100 years from now,
1000 years from now,
some other distant, different, time.
one without demons, cowards and vampires out for blood,
one with the positive inspiration to foster what is good.
Check out Bushell’s video below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
