Megan Martha White (born December 10, 1974) is an American musician who was the drummer and occasional vocalist of the rock duo the White Stripes. She was a key artist of the 2000s indie and garage rock movements, noted for her minimalist drumming style and reserved public persona. The White Stripes split up in 2011 after which she ceased performing. Her last media appearance was in 2009, and she has not been active in the music industry since.
Born and raised in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, White met Jack Gillis in the early 1990s and the two married in 1996, with Jack taking her surname. She began playing the drums in 1997, and formed the White Stripes with Jack that year. They divorced in 2000, but continued performing at her insistence, presenting themselves to the music press as siblings. The band achieved international fame with four acclaimed albums released in the 2000s, establishing White as a leading figure in the decade's rock revival. She also had a short stint in acting and modeling, appearing in the 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes and a 2006 episode of The Simpsons. She was married to Jackson Smith from 2009 to 2013.
White's drumming initially polarized critics but has since become highly regarded and continually discussed. She has maintained an elusive media image and has given few interviews, which she attributes to shyness and a reclusive nature. With the White Stripes, she won six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025. Publications such as NME and Rolling Stone rank her among the greatest drummers in history.
Megan Martha White was born on December 10, 1974, in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan to parents Catherine and Walter Hackett White Jr. She has an older sister, Heather, and is of Scottish heritage. She grew up in the middle class Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, describing her childhood as "pretty normal" and non-religious. As a child, she went by her full name, and enjoyed the pastimes of roller skating, drawing, building snow fortresses, and doing makeup with her friends. As a teenager, she lived in Hamtramck, Michigan, and graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School, where she had a reputation for her artistic hobbies and quiet nature.
During her senior year, White met musician and fellow high school senior Jack Gillis at a coffee shop in either Ferndale, Michigan or Hamtramck. They formed a relationship and married in September 1996, with Jack taking her last name. They divorced in March 2000, though they resided in a house Jack purchased from his parents until 2003. She took on bartending jobs to pay for college, then attended a culinary school to pursue a career as a chef; she stated that, at that age, she was "super-shy" and lacked direction. She notably worked at a restaurant in downtown Royal Oak with Electric Six drummer Corey Martin.
Formation of the White Stripes (1997–2000)
In 1997, White began learning to play the drums using Jack's drum kit, who recalled her playing as "liberating and refreshing", opening up "something" within him. The two then formed the White Stripes and stuck to certain motifs: presenting themselves as siblings to an unknowing public, and keeping to a monochromatic theme, dressing only in red, white, and black. They played their first show at the Gold Dollar in Detroit, and achieved popularity in Michigan's underground garage rock scene, performing with established local bands such as Bantam Rooster and the Dirtbombs. In 1998, they were approached by Dave Buick of the Detroit-based independent record label Italy Records, who offered to pay for their debut single. "Let's Shake Hands" was then released in February 1998.
In 1999, the White Stripes signed with the California-based independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry and released their self-titled debut album to generally positive reviews. Although they divorced in 2000, they kept the band going at White's insistence. Their second album, De Stijl, was recorded sporadically at home in their living room in early 2000, and released under Sympathy that same year. Rolling Stone's Jenny Eliscu believed White's minimalist drumming proved that "you don't need bombast to make a blues explosion." De Stijl would become a sleeper hit after the White Stripes gained popularity in 2002. White also played drums for Soledad Brothers on their self-titled debut album (2000).
Mainstream breakthrough (2001–2006)
The White Stripes released their third album, White Blood Cells, in 2001. Meg shared vocals with Jack on the tracks "Hotel Yorba" and "This Protector", and also on the Loretta Lynn cover "Rated X", featured as the B-side to "Hotel Yorba". It was their last album to be released with Sympathy, after which they signed a licensing deal with V2 Records through Jack's own label, Third Man Records. White Blood Cells was given a major label reissue in 2002, which brought them to the forefront of the garage rock revival and made them one of the most acclaimed bands of the year. Chris Deville of Stereogum praised White for bashing "the bejesus out of her drums" and called the pair "too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore." The album included the single "Fell in Love with a Girl", which won them three awards at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards.
The White Stripes released their fourth studio album, Elephant, in 2003 to critical acclaim. The band's continued success helped establish White as a key figure of 2000s rock, and both Elephant and White Blood Cells were included on numerous editions of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. By this point, White's drumming became a focal point of the band, described as "hypnotic" and "explosively minimal" by Phares, and "simple but effective" by Chuck Taylor from Billboard. Elephant's first single, "Seven Nation Army", became the band's signature song and a sports anthem. Journalist Alexis Petridis considers "The Hardest Button to Button", the album's third single, to feature some of her best drumming. The track "In the Cold, Cold Night" additionally features White singing lead for the first time, with her voice being described as "delicate and sweet" in another Billboard article by Andrew Katchen. The Guardian deemed all three songs to be among the greatest made by the band. Elephant won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and "Seven Nation Army" won the Grammy for Best Rock Song.
White made her film debut appearing with Jack in Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes. They star as fictionalized versions of themselves in the segment "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil", which expands on Nikola Tesla and White Stripes motifs such as childhood innocence. She described her acting debut as "easier than I thought it was gonna be", and said she became "more confident than I used to be, but not much." Jarmusch believed that "she could have been a huge silent-movie star, just from her face." That same year, White began appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien as a recurring performer. In 2004, she starred in the band's first music film Under Blackpool Lights, which was shot entirely on super 8 film. Jamie Russell of BBC described her performance as "orgasmically pounding the drums" and "exhilarating." White appears on the cover of Whirlwind Heat's single "Pink" (2004) wearing a bunny costume; the photo was taken while the White Stripes and Whirlwind Heat toured together in Japan. Also in 2004, White appeared in an episode of Pancake Mountain and played Little Red Riding Hood in the music video for "Cha Cha Twist" by the Detroit Cobras.
The White Stripes experimented with their sound on their fifth album, Get Behind Me Satan, with White using percussion bells, maracas, and tambourines. The album was released in 2005 and won the band their second Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. White performed lead vocals on "Passive Manipulation", for which Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone described her vocals as "chilling" while Matthew Murphy of Pitchfork thought that the song "begs the gentle suggestion that Meg not be allowed to sing lead." She appears in the documentary The Fearless Freaks (2005), which chronicles the rock band the Flaming Lips.