Jack White Headed For First #1 Album

'I've got another 12 songs that I haven't finished yet,' White says of his extra tracks for another LP.
By Gil Kaufman

Jack White
Photo: WireImage

It's hard to believe, but restless rocker Jack White has never scored a #1 album. Not with the White Stripes, or with any of his other side bands (the Dead Weather, the Raconteurs).

But according to Billboard estimates, that drought may end next week when the #1 six-string hustler is predicted to take the top spot with his solo debut, Blunderbuss.

The disc is expected to move between 100,000-120,000 copies in an otherwise slow week. Though White has landed seven top 10 albums with his various other groups, his highest chart debut or peak with them was the White Stripes' 2007 masterpiece, Icky Thump, which came in and peaked at #2.

It should come as no surprise that the man who has made a career at juggling 50 things at once, and who is also working on his first soundtrack album for Johnny Depp's "Lone Ranger"
 movie, has plenty more music in the can. In addition to the 12 tracks he recorded for Blunderbuss, White told England's Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe that he's already got a stockpile of songs for a possible follow-up.

"We had enough for an album at one point, but I just kept going ... I've got another 12 songs that I haven't finished yet ... There's songs that White Stripes never really played live, or Raconteurs never really got that into, or songs that I brought to the table in a band - songs like '[I Cut Like a] Buffalo' - and now I can elaborate on them".

White is getting ready to hit the road with his unique band set-up, which consists of one all-male and one all-female crew
, who are not informed about whether they will play each night until just before the show. "The easy thing to do would be to go and find four or five guys to play in just like the record and stand behind me," he said. "I just didn't want to bore myself to death and bore people with that jazz and it just to just be some nostalgia thing."

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