Wilco: A Love Letter in 16 Songs

Charles on some favorite tracks by a band he loves

Wilco celebrates its 30^th birthday this year – at least in terms of their debut album, A.M., released on March 28^th, 1995. Since then, they’ve become one of this era’s most acclaimed rock bands, traveling the sometimes-treacherous terrain between the alternative 90s and future-age new millennium with records that both celebrated the traditions and moved with a restless stylistic curiosity. While somewhat invested in the “old, weird America” of music’s mythic past, Wilco ultimately seemed far more interested in reckoning with the new weird America as it approached and pushed forward.

Once young guns, they’re now legacy elders – subject of massive box sets, retrospectives, and shout-outs from a new generation – even as Jeff Tweedy and his collaborators keep releasing new music effectively as often, and often as effectively, as they ever have. It’s been a long journey from Wilco’s emergence as post-Uncle Tupelo keepers of the twang-infused rock flame, and I’ve been a big fan ever since I heard A.M as a Midwestern teenager. Now, in my formerly-Midwestern middle age, I realize that Wilco has been a major portion of the soundtrack of my life since then. This is perhaps expected, and even cliché, for my fortysomething-cis-white-guy self. (And with a beard, no less!). But it feels less like cultural predetermination than a testament to how many ways this great American rock ‘n’ roll band has mattered to me over the years. So, here are 16 of my favorites. (Why 16? Why not?)

As always, a few caveats: 1) I only went with records billed to Wilco, meaning that various side projects (from Tweedy to Autumn Defense to Loose Fur and beyond) don’t get covered here; 2) There’s nothing from the many “Roadcase” live downloads that they’ve made available through their website; 3) Many of the group’s most famous songs – and even many of my own favorites – aren’t here, both because of space limitations and my attempt to survey their entire career. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive overview of Wilco and their work: For that, I’d check out Greg Kot’s Learning How to Die and Jeff Tweedy’s fine memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), along with critic and Wilco fan Steven Hyden’s 2019 attempt to rank their 60 best songs. (The band also features prominently in Niko Stratis’ forthcoming, and fantastic, book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman – you don’t want to miss this book, trust me.)

I hope you’ll take this in the spirit it’s intended, and that you’ll shout out any of your missing favorites in the comments. I probably love them too. For now, let me count some of the ways…

1. “I Must Be High” (from A.M., 1995)

At its best, A.M. accomplishes its mission of establishing Tweedy and company post-Uncle Tupelo as skilled purveyors of twangy rock (with touches of punk roar and pop sweetness) that transcends the real and perceived borders of whatever “alt-country” was ever meant to suggest. “I Must Be High,” the kickoff track, does it best of all, loping along with a descending chord progression and sweetly croaked melody that settles between the Box Tops and Big Star phases of Alex Chilton. With an initial lineup that includes Brian Henneman, then launching his terrific and similarly-minded Bottle Rockets, “I Must Be High” and A.M.’s other highlights still work in the mix with Wilco’s three decades of sonic divergences. Pure pop for cow people.

2. “I Got You (at the End of the Century)” (from Being There, 1996)

If A.M. is a very good country-rock record, Being There is a great rock album. From the dissonant fade-in that opens “Misunderstood,” it seems self-consciously designed to expand and reimagine what a Wilco album could sound like before anything firmed up, as well as placing the band in double-album lineages from obvious predecessors like the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street to less direct precursors like Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime. With the essential addition of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jay Bennett to the lineup, Wilco get weirder and noisier while staying centered in the big-rock riffs and twangy textures (often provided by Max Johnston’s dobro, mandolin, fiddle, and banjo). There’s a reason why a handful of rockers on Being There’s first disc – this, “Outtasite (Outtamind),” and “Monday” – are all still cathartic cornerstones of Wilco encores. For me, it’s the glammy singalong stomp of “I Got You” that’s shines brightest, from the previous century into this new one. I doubt I’ll be around to see the start of the 2100s, but I hope somebody somewhere rocks out to this song while the clock ticks down.

3. “Say You Miss Me” (from Being There, 1996)

I love Being There’s baggy indulgence, which is perfectly in keeping with the overstuffed lengths of mid-‘90s albums even as Wilco separates it into two shorter discs. There are some highlights on disc two – “Sunken Treasure” and “The Lonely 1” stick out – but the first disc is such a killer that I almost wish they’d released it on its own. Then Being There would end with this heartbroken ballad that pairs Bennett’s lap steel with Ken Coomer’s rock-solid drumming as Tweedy pleas into the microphone like he’s making a late-night phone call. It’s the kind of lovely tear-in-my-beer-jerker that the band wouldn’t foreground going forward, but was one of their most effective modes and probably still could be.

4. “One Hundred Years from Now” (from Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, 1998)

I put this rip-roaring version of a Gram Parsons-penned Byrds classic here for a couple reasons: 1) It rocks; 2) It’s one of the last times that the group fully reached back to those “alt-country” roots, sounding not unlike Uncle Tupelo or Bottle Rockets; 3) It stands in for the larger set of covers that they put on soundtracks and tributes in these years. I could’ve easily chosen their popping take on Buffalo Springfield’s “Burned,” plaintive Big Star tribute “Thirteen,” or surprisingly effective run through Steely Dan’s “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” as a representative. But this is my pick to click, a sparking highlight of a very good tribute record that approaches Parsons’ catalog with as much joy as reverence. Wilco got that memo, turning the Byrds’ echoey vision into a full-throated anthem that balances between desperation and resolution, with the chorus driven by fist-pumping insistence. Turn it up.

5. “California Stars” (from Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 1, 1998)

Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 1 is a great idea done really well, as Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics and create an album that honors the legendary songwriter while decentering expectations about him. Guthrie’s political and ramblin-‘round sides get featured some, for sure, but the album is mostly made up of songs that reveal other sides to his interests, from Bragg’s laconic takes on horndog jokes “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” and “Ingrid Bergman” to Wilco’s deep-blue ballads “At My Window Sad and Lonely” and “Another Man’s Done Gone.” The album’s best and most enduring track, “California Stars,” is perhaps the only moment on this great album when source and interpreter completely merge. Tweedy sings the circling, circular lullaby with equal tenderness and strength, joined by an increasing number of background voices, as the band adds layers atop the simple, sturdy melody. It all adds up to something beautiful and sneakily entrancing. (Side note: one of my favorite versions comes from the Austin City Limits honors in 2022, when Wilco performed the song as a show closer accompanied by a fever-dream assemblage of musicians from Jason Isbell to Sheila E.)

6. “A Shot in the Arm” (from Summerteeth, 1999)

Summerteeth is my favorite Wilco album: With one foot in the conventional and one foot in the experimental, it’s a remarkable and strange collection that both strikes immediately and retains its mysteries across many listens. Central to this is that its lush arrangements spotlight perhaps the best production of the band’s career. They’ve fully left “alternative country” behind here. As our own David Cantwell noted in No Depression (named, of course, after a Carters-referencing Uncle Tupelo title), Summerteeth instead resides in the AM airwaves of the ‘70s, with Electric Light Orchestra as a particularly clear referent. He’s right: Every track features a fluid bed of instrumentation that support melodies as sturdy as ever, animated by lyrics that find Tweedy incorporating a new level of enigmatic imagery and structure. (Jay Bennett is credited as co-writer of almost all the album’s music.) As Cantwell noted, Tweedy’s lyrics focus particularly on aspects of loneliness, a theme that usually – thought not always – casts a shadow across the shiny soundscape. (The rushing “I’m Always in Love,” for example, illustrates what happens when “please fuck me” turns into “well, fuck me.”) But, even when the album mines unsettling thematic territory (the “she begs me not to hit her” ending of “She’s a Jar” is still bracing), the album remains a thrilling sonic rush. Speaking of which, “A Shot in the Arm” confronts an exhausted, possibly-addicted moment of reckoning with a Wall of Sound arrangement. It climaxes in a chorus that finds Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt (whose high harmonies have been a not-so-secret Wilco weapon from 1995 to today) pleading for a shot of something “bloodier than blood” (or, excuse me, “BLOODIER THAN BLOOD!”) as a source of potential rejuvenation. It might only be a temporary strategy for (as they call it elsewhere) how to fight loneliness, but it’s a good one.

7. “When You Wake Up Feeling Old” (from Summerteeth, 1999)

The final stretch of Summerteeth – at least before the big finish of “Candyfloss” – is a gorgeous suite of ‘60s-derived folk-pop that stretches from the Beach Boy sigh of “My Darling” to the fractured “In a Future Age.” My favorite of the group, and one of my very favorites on the album, is the jaunty Swinging-London swirl of “When You Wake Up Feeling Old.” Supported by punctuating harmonies and tinkling piano, Tweedy here searches for home in a manner that seems alternately resolved and unresolvable. It’s a sonic snow flurry, fitting for this most Chicago of rock bands, wrapping around the listener and then melting away.

8. “Secret of the Sea” (from Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2, 2000)

Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2 is not as good as its predecessor overall, but the high points are remarkable. Bragg does well, but Wilco has the best moments, whether the rumbling “Airline to Heaven” or this power-pop gem, which pairs a devotional lyric with a sailor’s metaphor in a manner befitting Guthrie’s time in the Merchant Marines. It’s a jingle-jangle morning and a bridge between the rootedness of their 1990s with the explorations in the new millennium. Truth be told, I’m not sure I’ve ever loved one of their songs more than I love this one.

9. “Jesus, Etc.” (from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002)

The mythology surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is almost too much for the album itself to withstand. Whether the drama over its release that made Wilco into system-resisting heroes, or the internal battles during its recording that led to Jay Bennett’s non-amicable departure, or the almost immediate (and continuing) suggestion that it was a masterpiece, it would be understandable if YHF could never live up to these concentric circles of hype and hindsight. And yet it holds up. For me, the most remarkable thing about this celebrated album is just how good it actually is, with songs that rank among Tweedy’s (and Bennett’s) best and a sound that blends the sound-art tapestry of new band affiliate Jim O’Rourke with the widescreen pop-rock of Summerteeth. Since its 2002 release, nearly all of its songs have been my favorite. But the one that found the deepest place in my heart is “Jesus, Etc.” Propelled by Jessy Greene’s layered violins, this tender soul simmer unfolds a lyric of devotion in desperate circumstances. “Our love is all we have” is a note of both assurance and caution, with the sweet promises of “you can rely on me” to “be around” counterpointed by evocations of “tall buildings shak[ing]” and “voices escap[ing] singing sad, sad songs” that are spooky even outside of the 9/11 context that draped across the album. It’s one of their most beloved songs, and for good reason. (Check out the prayerful version by the late Bill Fay, for whom Tweedy and the band became prominent champions.) As another Midwestern pop-rock great might say, “Jesus, Etc.” – like much of YHF – is oh so sadly beautiful.

10. “Camera” (alternate) (from Alpha Mike Foxtrot)

The unreleased Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions and demos became a kind of talisman for Wilco fans, with bootlegs circulating around like a revelatory addition to the acclaimed album, or even a “this is better” reimagining that allowed listeners to play out debates over the band’s creative direction through whether they preferred variously adorned or unadorned versions of its tracks. I certainly played this game back in the day, and there are still YHF alternates that I’ll put alongside (though never above) the released versions. This is one of them. The alternate “Camera” that’s included on Alpha Mike Foxtrot, the odds-and-sods box covering Wilco’s first two decades, is a fuzzed-out explosion with Tweedy’s voice poking through snarls of distortion. Whereas the released “Kamera” mutes the drums behind acoustic pulse and hushed Tweedy vocals, here Tweedy shouts while drummer Glenn Kotche pounds inside a mess of electricity. It almost sounds like a garage-rock band trying to play their version of the album take. Like many of the alternate YHF cuts, there’s a looseness to this “Camera” that complements the fine-tuned constructions of the official release, and reminds listeners that Wilco still knows how to cut loose when they take the notion. Or when you do.

11. “The Late Greats” (from A Ghost Is Born, 2004)

A Ghost Is Born is the band’s most unsettling and unsettled album. That’s fitting, given that – as he’s discussed – Tweedy approached it through his battles with opiate addiction, panic attacks, and chronic migraines, as well as the personal and band fallout from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot dramas. Ghost is weirder than its predecessor: It’s flinty and sharp, with Tweedy introducing a semi-whisper that’s become one of his primary vocal techniques, and even bigger moments like the go-for-broke punk of “I’m a Wheel” or swelling anti-gospel of “Theologians” feel twitchy and restive. It makes sense that the album’s best song appears after 12 minutes of feedback noise that may well have convinced listeners that the album was over, either because they thought Wilco wanted it that way or because the listener decided they’d had enough. But, after the cacophony, the brief, thrumming stomp of “The Late Greats” serves as both catharsis and summation. Moving from a tribute to a fictional song, band, and singer into a reminder about life’s ephemeral beauty, “The Late Greats” pairs straight-ahead verses with two instrumental sections that grow complicated: the second one spirals out into spacey, altered-time filigrees before crashing back into the central riff and heading into the thesis-statement third verse. “The best songs never get sung,” Tweedy suggests there, but “The Late Greats” proves that some damn good ones do.

12. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” (live) (from Kicking Television, 2005)

Wilco is a great live rock ‘n’ roll band. They were great in the Jay Bennett era, and they became newly, differently great as they reformed after YHF into the six-piece version they remain today. The crucial additions of jazz-oriented guitarist Nels Cline, sound-art keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and pop-rock stalwart Pat Sansone gave them a push-and-pull between their respective eras (which always blurred more than sometimes got acknowledged). Their 2005 live album Kicking Television is a great demonstration of how all this worked. The band crunches through the old songs, finds footing on the new ones, and takes particular pleasure in A Ghost Is Born’s feverish creeper “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” A droning motorik rocker, “Spiders” bears the clear influence of Television, who became a cornerstone for the band in this period. (I mean, just look at the album’s title, also the name of a Ghost bonus track featured in a live version here.) Hypnotic and unsettling, with a final line of “There’s no blood on my hands, I just do what I’m told” that hit particularly hard in the depths of the Iraq War, the song spotlights both the individual gifts of members old and new (with mainstay John Stirratt’s bass humming underneath Nels Cline’s jagged soloes) and the profound tightness of a group newly transformed, vividly alive, and ready to rock and roll all night.

13. “Wilco (The Song)” (from Wilco (The Album), 2009)

Wilco is funny, and the self-deprecating, purposely absurd “Wilco (The Song)” might be the best example. They seem to be taking direct aim at the more grandiose sides of their reputation, promising that the band will help listeners find love, fulfillment, and even greater health. It makes sense that Wilco (the band) put “Wilco (The Song)” at the front of Wilco (The Album), the second in a late-2000s trilogy that cemented their emerging (and only partially fair) reputation as protectors of classic-rock sensibilities. (The first was Sky Blue Sky, the third was The Whole Love, and all three have a bunch of great songs on them that fit comfortably, but never lazily, into a broadly defined ‘70s groove. I’m particularly fond of the Mott the Hoople punch of “You Never Know” and twinkling pop of “The Whole Love.”) But let’s be clear: This song doesn’t mock those who love them. Much like the wink-and-nod of early Nick Lowe (who became their tour-mate in this period, and who the band covered), “Wilco (The Song)” shows that the band neither takes themselves too seriously nor takes us as a joke. And both of those impulses have served them very well over the years.

14. “Random Name Generator” (from Star Wars, 2015)

Just when Wilco solidified their aforementioned (and only partially fair) reputation as protectors of classic-rock sensibilities, they made some albums that seemed to directly resist such a title. They’re stranger and smaller in ways that seem less about reduced ambitions and more about a willingness to poke around more idiosyncratic corners. This started with 2015’s Star Wars, the cheeky title of which punctured mythology even more effectively than “Wilco (The Song).” Its best track, the twitchy bubblegum “Random Name Generator,” is the kind of romping rocker they’d been rolling out since the beginning, but with a welcome air of goofball bop that (at least to my ears) makes this one of Wilco’s most danceable songs. From the twinned Tweedy vocal to the screaming hard-rock guitars, it’s all a bit ridiculous in the best possible way. Rock on.

15. “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” (from Ode to Joy, 2019)

Prior to its release, Tweedy described Ode to Joy to NPR as an album of “really big, big folk songs” that tried to capture the importance of the “freedom to still have joy even though things are going to shit.” Ain’t that the truth. “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” locates that dynamic in the literal and figurative center of the circle, as Tweedy (whose whisper here becomes a purr) describes the good feelings that surround him even as he recognizes their precariousness. The guitars double this ambivalence, sparkling waterfalls that surround Tweedy as he sings, and “Love Is Everywhere” works as both an affirming political response and a subtly gorgeous example of the band’s enduring interest in the close relationship between comfort and anxiety. I doubt any element of this message will grow less relevant going forward.

16. “Falling Apart (Right Now)” (from Cruel Country, 2022)

At first blush, 2022’s Cruel Country seemed to announce a return to Wilco’s roots. There’s the title, taken from a brooding state-of-the-union ballad that’s one of the album’s highlights. There’s the fact that it’s about the same number of songs and length as Being There. And there’s first single “Falling Apart (Right Now),” with its friendly country stomp and kick-‘em-up chorus. Taken as a whole, the album itself isn’t that much of a throwback (and for the better – it’s their best album in many years). But “Falling Apart” is the best of the several Cruel Country tracks that exemplified the reasons I fell in love with Wilco in the first place. As much as I’ve loved the group’s noisier, quieter, and weirder sides, there was something both refreshing and reinvigorating about hearing them crank through this twangy three-minute rocker. Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the early COVID era, it was a breath of fresh air that I really needed. I’ll follow them wherever they go, of course, but it was awfully nice to go home again for a little while.

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