Songfacts®:

• White told NME that the lyric, "Let the stripes unfurl," should not be interpreted as a reference to his former wife and White Stripes partner, Meg White. He explained: "When I wrote, 'Let the Stripes unfurl,' I was talking about the American dream... not Meg. But I don't mind that metaphor, because it also deals with the subject, which is about big white people selling authenticity through black music."
• White sounds like he is singing "hippopotamus poor boy," which is no accident. He explained to The Sun: "I promised myself that if any melodies came into my head when I was asleep, I'd force myself to get up and write them down, which is hard to do at five in the morning. For years I'd never done it and regretted it every time. So I got that one down with hippopotamus as the place holder word. By the time I got back round to it, I started to sing 'hip eponymous'."