Michel Gondry has been making music videos for The White Stripes since 2002. The first video he directed for the Detroit duo was the now iconic, Lego-laden short for Fell in Love With A Girl. It was a match made in heaven: one of modern film's most imaginative minds melding imagery with one of modern music's last true rock bands.
Since their initial collaboration, Gondry went on to direct three more of the band's best music videos, Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground, The Hardest Button to Button, and The Denial Twist. Yesterday, he took both the world and Jack White himself by surprise releasing a companion to a single of their newly released Jack White Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016. The video has all the simplicity and creativity we've grown to love from Gondry, as in one take, we see a man (Gondry himself?) tell the story of a relationship through foggy images on a condensation-laced shower door. We can definitely say there's never been anything done like this before. Watch it below.
Third Man Records released the following statement on The Whites Stripes YouTube channel:
Third Man Records is pleased to share the genius surprise gift they received from their friend MICHEL GONDRY. On his own and without anyone's knowledge, the legendary filmmaker shot a video for "City Lights," which he sent them the other night. The video is Gondry's fifth visual collaboration with The White Stripes. "City Lights" was written for The White Stripes' GET BEHIND ME SATAN but then forgotten until White revisited the 2005 album for Third Man's Record Store Day 2015 vinyl reissue and finished the recording in 2016. The track is the first new, worldwide commercially released song by The White Stripes since 2008.
If you haven't seen the artists' previous collaborations, definitely take a minute to check out the work below. It's clear that some of these videos (specifically 2002's Fell in Love With A Girl and 2003's The Hardest Button to Button) helped build Gondry's reputation and credibility as a viable filmmaker, to the point where Focus Features felt ready to give him a shot at his second feature, Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind in 2004, which went on to become one of the cult classics of the aughts and made it into the top ten of BBC's list of the top 100 greatest films of the 21st century.
