As a new book of his lyrics, poems and selected musings is published, the White Stripes’ singer, songwriter and general guitar hero reflects on poetry, politics and why writing a song is like reupholstering a chair

On the jacket of Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, the  poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib writes: “I wish I read more people who talked about Jack White as a writer of lyrics.” He makes a good point. White is celebrated as a singer, guitarist, producer and generator of indelible riffs but not so much as a wordsmith. His new book, edited by official archivist Ben Blackwell, sets the record straight. Following 2023’s The White Stripes Complete Lyrics 1997-2007, it covers every song White has written outside that band, along with several poems, Instagram ruminations and scans from his notebooks.

White, 50, thinks fast and talks fast. He’s sitting in the Nashville headquarters of Third Man, a record label, recording studio, pressing plant, publishing house, shop and ever-expanding vessel for White’s vision of what is worth valuing and preserving in American culture. He’s a kind of historian of American vernacular, drawn to the relationship between pop and the avant garde, between maverick auteurs and the communal imagination. His own work proves that defiant eccentricity is no obstacle to stadium shows and Bond themes, and that being wildly prolific hasn’t diminished his mystique. With this book, he turns his curatorial eye on himself.

Olly Alexander and Glyn Fussell’s starry, Live Aid-inspired shindig – featuring Christine and the Queens, Kae Tempest and Munroe Bergdorf – is a show of unity in a dark time for trans people

‘We wanted to put on something as big as possible,” says the musician and actor Olly Alexander. He’s talking about Trans Mission, a night of solidarity with the transgender community that he’s put together with Mighty Hoopla director Glyn Fussell in aid of the Good Law Project and the charity Not a Phase. The jam-packed Wembley Arena bill includes Christine and the Queens, Sugababes, Romy and Wolf Alice.

For Alexander, Trans Mission is about “celebration, joy, unity”. For Christine and the Queens, it will be “a place of collective empathy”. For Not a Phase founder Dani St James, “it’s basically a super sped-up Royal Variety Performance, but with me and Olly double-kissing them and not Charles shaking their hands”.