Misunderstood

Misunderstood by Wilco
Fourth Best Song
Random Programing Note: So this week we are featuring our top eight songs, in order, of all time. These are songs that we consider to be the best of all time.

I will never understand this song, but I will always take lines from this song and treasure them because it captures exact moments in time, usually either during a blah Wednesday afternoon or late on a Friday or Saturday night:
Back in the old neighborhood… You're hurt but you don't know why You love her but you don't know why Short on long term goals There's a party there that we oughtta go to Do you still love rock and roll? Do you still love rock and roll?... You're staring at a picture of me... All you touch turns to lead... I'd like to thank you all for nothin' at all
I don't know who Jeff Tweedy is talking about, I'm pretty sure this song is brutally honest and auto-biographical. And this is why I love it. The brutal honestly. The simplicity of the song, a piano, a guitar, and a man with his thoughts and past. It's heartbreaking... you feel his pain when he's singing this song. It's a Rip-My-Heart-Out-Classic, a master piece of sound, words, thoughts, and composition.

In December of 2005, I was lucky enough to go to Buenos Aires. We were staying in PuertoMadero and along the water of these old docks was this old silo. For some reason I didn't take a picture of this silo, but for me it was some sort of liberalizing structure. I was pretty stuck in early January of 2006, and that silo and this song sort of pulled me out of the muck. This silo reminded me of the old abandoned silo that's next to the Chicago River on Damen - we would drive past that silo every time I went to her place or she dropped me off at mine. And there I was in Buenos Aires, hung up on the same girl, looking at a old, abandoned silo... this song and that silo came to represent that relationship. Girls are nasty like that... but I remember being alone a few times on the trip, walking around the old docks, looking at that silo, while listening to this song on my iPod. And in the mist of it all (well actually, the line "You love her but you don't know why"), I was being freed. It was that line that knocked some sense in me. One, I wasn't in love. Two, since I couldn't explain it, why was I hung up on it? I let her go and haven't looked back.

* Sorry, we were in Boston the past few days and weren't able to post... boo to us, I know. But Boston WAS nice.

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