Eh, I think it's just because they're bad.

Yes, the lyrics are horrendous, but TOTBL was ok, because you either couldn't understand them anyway, or you could assume it was a stylistic choice.

Then we realized that no, sadly, it wasn't a style maneuver. It was just bad writing.

Yeah thats what i meant, they got poor once you understood the lyrics, i.e. everything after TOBL

"You make me wanna pick up a guitar and celebrate the myriad ways that i love you"

Now, you could get away with that in a perky pop-punk song, as long as you drop the completely pointless use of the word "myriad" and you hide it in a tune, or in a sleazy rock n roll song for the same reason. But when youre going for a "bleak" sound and you use something like that, you will end up sounding like a sixth former who thinks Love Will Tear Us Apart is just about that girl who you kinda fancy and nothing more.

Well at least in the Finnish music magazines those bands had put into same genre in the early 2000`s. And I really wonder, if Jack White hadn´t ever heard Jon Spencer before White Stripes. I hear a lot in common in White Stripes and Spencer, they both don´t have any bass and they added rhythm-element in their "garage"-rock. I think today´s music people´s problem is that they think too strict about what belongs into some genre. Most of the 60´s psychedelic and 70´s punk bands don´t really sound the same, still they belong into same genre. And I think that´s the one main problem in newdays music, it´s very rare that bands have something very own. Also it´s very common that somebody start something new (I mean little different that has made before) for example Nirvana, Hole and Mudhoney started to play in style that people started to call grunge. Then came a dozen much more mediocre bands after that.

I think Jon Spencer have had the same problem than many other great artist before him that he was ahead of his time. The most known example is the original blues musicians. The young british men started to play their music and become much more popular. Also Velvet and Stooges were ahead of their time. But all those artists become famous later, those young british men helped the old blues musicians to become famous for example making records with them, also many punk/new wave artist has said that they own almost everything to Velvet and Stooges. But you are right about that, I think also White Stripes and Strokes didn´t give fuck about Jon Spencer and I think it´s wrong!

Well, if JSBE haven´t really been influence to White Stripes, they don´t of course have to lie about it. But at least White Stripes could have showed some appreciation about JSBE, because Stripes become much more succesfull with the same musical elements than JSBE. Like I have said, that was the way before in Rock business, but it seems it´s not anymore in these much more selfish times.

To me White Stripes couldn´t add anything to that what JSBE had already done.