Originally written for Get Behind Me Satan but not finished until 2016, ‘City Lights’ was released in August of 2016 as the first new track from the Jack White release Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, a 26-track compilation featuring album tracks, B-sides, and alternate takes of songs by The White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and White’s own solo catalog. At the time, the track was the first new, worldwide commercially released White Stripes song since 2008.

Fittingly, the stripped down, acoustic nature of the song is reminiscent of other tracks from Satan, which, at the time of its release in 2005, marked a distinct change from the more guitar-heavy, garage rock sound that had dominated the group’s previous albums to that point.

In a press release posted on Jack White’s own Third Man Records on August 11, 2016 announcing the release of Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, the track was introduced:

“City Lights” – which premiered today at jackwhiteiii.com – was written for The White Stripes’ GET BEHIND ME SATAN but then forgotten until White revisited the 2005 album for Third Man’s Record Store Day 2015 vinyl reissue and finished the recording in 2016. The track is the first new, worldwide commercially released White Stripes song since 2008."

The press release also provided a further description of the track in the form of an excerpt from the album’s liner notes, written by music journalist Greil Marcus:

This, like (Son House’s) ‘Grinnin’ In Your Face,’ is mirror-music. The singer talking to himself, trying to tell himself the truth, which he’s going to need if he’s going to step out of his door, walk into the world, and fool himself, for just a second, that he’s ready to take it on. As you listen, it’s no surprise at all that it took most of White’s music-making life to bring the song home.”