Jack White wants to form a corporation! [Updated]

As a corporate attorney, I don’t often find references to the kind of work I do in popular culture. I was pretty surprised, therefore, when I was listening to Boardinghouse Reach, the newly released album by Jack White, one of my favorite artists (who is rightly viewed as one of the great musical talents in rock). The album features a catchy track called “Corporation” (Spotify, Apple Music), in which White sings:

I’m thinking about starting a corporation.
Who’s with me?
Nowadays that’s how you get adulation.
Who wants to start a corporation?

I am trying to contain my excitement (and to resist the temptation to analyze whether White should start a corporation or an LLC). The song goes on to discuss what, I take it, are some of the activities he’s got planned for his corporation:

I’m buying all the empty cars and making one giant army.
Who’s with me?
I’m gonna buy up all the empty lots and make one giant farm.
Who’s with me?

One critic calls this song a “fever dream,” which seems about right, though I’ve definitely heard stranger ideas than these in my years practicing as a startup lawyer! (Creating an army of cars sounds like it might be somewhere on Uber’s product roadmap.)

In real life, White is a creative force and successful entrepreneur. So I say, if he wants to start a corporation, I definitely want to represent him.

UPDATE 05/17/18: It looks like one of Jack White’s major influences, Led Zeppelin, also got down and dirty with some legalese. From the end of Travelling Riverside Blues (Spotify, Apple Music), on the album Coda:

She’s got a mortgage on my body, got a lien on my soul.


Categorised as: News and Views


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