5. The White Stripes: “The Union Forever”
Jack and Meg White’s peppermint-candy color palette gave the duo an us-against-the-world camaraderie — which got a little complicated when people realized that the Whites were not, as they’d initially said, brother and sister, but rather a formerly married couple. Whatever works! (Listen on YouTube)
6. The Hives: “Main Offender”
The White Stripes weren’t the only stars of the early 2000s garage-rock revival to embrace the uniform. The zany Swedish rockers the Hives — who returned earlier this year with their first album in a decade — made stage-wear fun again with their bold black-and-white suits. (It wasn’t until they made it big, though, that they could afford to launder them properly. Said the drummer Chris Dangerous in a Times profile earlier this year, their earliest suits “smelled so bad, when we walked onstage at the end of the tour, the audience stepped back.”) (Listen on YouTube)
7. Destiny’s Child: “So Good”
Destiny’s Child updated the sound — and, of course, the look — of the girl group during its reign in the late ’90s and early 2000s. In coordinated outfits designed by Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, the girls glittered in green at the Grammys and, in the “Survivor” video, projected strength in matching camo prints. As the group’s lineup went through some notorious changes, the matching outfits perhaps served the more practical purpose of reminding people who, at any given time, was actually in Destiny’s Child. (Listen on YouTube)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah!,
Lindsay
The Amplifier Playlist
Listen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.
“Bands in Uniform” track list
Track 1: Devo, “Uncontrollable Urge”
Track 2: The Ramones, “Cretin Hop”
Track 3: The Maddox Brothers & Rose, “Empty Mansions”
Track 4: The Temptations, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”
Track 5: The White Stripes, “The Union Forever”
Track 6: The Hives, “Main Offender”
Track 7: Destiny’s Child, “So Good”
