It's two years later and I'm finally ready to say it: Elephant is a godawful awesome album. Just a real knockout. At the time, I was terrifically underwhelmed. I basically thought it had no good qualities at all. I thought each song was poorly developed and leaning toward weak, and that the album had bad pacing as a whole. I thought that the copious overdubs killed the feeling that Jack's songs had had up to that point. I thought there were no original ideas, no real expansion as a band.

My God.

Every record critic seems to have a "What the hell was I thinking?" moment. As a critical listener of music, this was mine.

I take it all back. Sorry, Jack White.