The subtle genius of Wilco’s 1996 track Misunderstood

Misunderstood was one of the first Wilco songs I heard, and the first song I consciously heard. I’d heard Wilco songs in videos and on podcasts, but the 1996 album Being There was the first Wilco album I sat down with and tried to listen to. This was mostly due to the album’s cover – a lone hand holding the neck of a guitar against a yellow wall. Something about that cover told me the album was going to have a lot of warm, acoustic introspection on it – and this was a correct assumption. There are certainly other Wilco songs I love – the meandering and lonely Ashes of American Flags, the perfect pop of Heavy Metal Drummer and Box Full of Letters, the guitar heroics of Impossible Germany (also my introduction to the subtle genius of guitarist Nels Cline, who joined the band later on) – but Misunderstood stuck with me.

Been there, listened to that

Mistunderstood is a postmodern loser anthem, idiosyncratic heartbreak painted on the canvas of a repeated 2 chords on piano and acoustic guitar mingled with subtle noise segments between verses, comprised of Wilco members playing instruments they were not used to playing. The song tells the story of a loner, living a life of suburban nothingness. This antihero’s life seems to be defined by an unknown rock band, perhaps Wilco itself or Uncle Tupelo (Wilco singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s previous project). I’ll mention this later. Throughout the song the motif “You’re so misunderstood” is repeated, and takes on a double meaning. Yes, the protagonist is misunderstood. He (I’m assuming it’s a “he” due to the line “Momma’s boy” later in the song) feels out of place, alienated, and compensates for this by listening to his favorite records. But the repetition of the line makes it feel somewhat self-satirical. As in, yeah, you’re so “misunderstood”, all of you. Almost as if Tweedy is poking fun at America’s dissolutioned youth obsessed with music who claim to just be “misunderstood” and toss of their failures as a by-product of this. The song really reflects the nature of the relationship between a musician and their fans. On the one hand, fans can find comfort in someone’s music in a world where they are otherwise alienated. But this relationship can become sour when the fan beings to fetishize the musician and hold them above anything else in the world. Take the verse, “It’s only a quarter to three / reflecting off of your CD / you’re looking at a picture of me / you’re staring at a picture of me” – the protagonist is unemployed (as later stated by Tweedy in the line “You’re positively unemployed”) and spending his afternoon listening to records and wallowing in his own self-pity.

Another thing which makes Misunderstood so perfectly introspective, at least on its top layer, is that it was quite a personal song for Tweedy. The “Mama’s Boy” line refers to an incident when the insult was used against Tweedy by a fellow member of his pre-Wilco project Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar. The entire Being There record is very personal, Tweedy exploring the relationship he had with music and his experiences as a musician – an older man (30 years old at the time) who still hadn’t quite broken through. Being There is one of the more introspective Wilco albums, one of the reasons I like it so much. One more fun fact about the track is that one verse – the Take the guitar player for a ride verse – takes lyrics from a Peter Laughner track entitled Amphetamine, an excellent listen if you are unfamiliar with it.

Jeff Tweedy now.



Misunderstood is such a great song because it is a good song to cry to – on the surface, a perfect loser anthem. But its also more intelligent than that – an interesting meta-observation on music considering context. In terms of Wilco’s discography, more songs like Misunderstood would appear on later albums, Tweedy is no stranger to acoustic introspection and noisy instrumental breaks. If you haven’t listened to Wilco, this is certainly a good place to start. Thank you for reading if you got this far.