Wilco (The Album)
Encyclopedia
Wilco is the seventh studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

 by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 group Wilco
Wilco
Wilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo following singer Jay Farrar's departure. Wilco's lineup has changed frequently, with only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John...

 which was released June 30, 2009. Prior to release, Wilco streamed the album on their website. The album was nominated for an Grammy Award for Best Americana Album
Grammy Award for Best Americana Album
The Grammy Award for Best Americana Album is an honor presented to recording artists for quality albums in the Americana music genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards...

.

Production

After Wilco released their sixth studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

, Sky Blue Sky
Sky Blue Sky
Sky Blue Sky is the sixth studio album by Chicago rock band Wilco, released on May 15, 2007 by Nonesuch Records. Originally announced on January 17, 2007 at a show in Nashville, Tennessee, it was the band's first studio album with guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone...

, in 2007, they spent the following two years touring to promote the album. In August 2008, Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

reported that Wilco had been playing two new songs, "One Wing" and "Sonny Feeling", at recent shows in anticipation of a new studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

revealed the title of the album on April 28, 2009.

Wilco (the album) included the first duet to be featured on a Wilco album, "You and I", which was recorded with Canadian indie folk
Indie folk
Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50s, 60s and early 70s, country music, and indie rock. A few early artists included Lou Barlow, Beck, Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith...

 singer Feist. The band met Feist at the 50th Grammy Awards
50th Grammy Awards
The 50th Annual Grammy Awards took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, on February 10, 2008. Kanye West received the most nominations, with eight. Amy Winehouse was the big winner, winning a total of five awards. Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters won Album of the Year,...

 and found they had a mutual appreciation for each others' music. The album was recorded in Neil Finn
Neil Finn
Neil Mullane Finn, OBE is a New Zealand Pop recording artist. Along with his brother Tim Finn, he was the co-frontman for Split Enz and is now frontman for Crowded House...

's recording studio Roundhead Studios
Roundhead Studios
Roundhead Studios is an Auckland-based sound recording studio owned by singer-songwriter Neil Finn. It was officially opened in June 2007, however by the time of its opening, several international artists had already used it whilst the studio was either in construction or receiving finishing...

 in Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. Members of Wilco were present to record material for a 7 Worlds Collide compilation album to benefit Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...

. Guitarist Nels Cline
Nels Cline
Nels Cline is an American guitarist and composer, currently the lead guitarist of alternative rock band Wilco. David Carr of the New York Times describes Cline as "one of the best guitarists in any genre."-Career:...

 and multi-instrumentalist Mikael Jorgensen
Mikael Jorgensen
Mikael Jorgensen is lead pianist and keyboardist for the band Wilco as well as a member of the band Pronto. He first appeared on Wilco's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born. On that album, he received songwriting credit for "Hell is Chrome" and "Theologians"...

 provided overdubs once the band returned to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. The album was produced by the band and Jim Scott, who worked as an engineer on Being There
Being There (album)
Being There is the second album by Chicago-based rock band Wilco. Despite its release as a nineteen-song double album, Being There was sold at a single album price due to a deal between lead singer Jeff Tweedy and Reprise Records...

, Summerteeth
Summerteeth
Summerteeth is the third studio album by Chicago alternative rock band Wilco. Released through Reprise Records on March 9, 1999, the album was heavily influenced lyrically by twentieth century literature, as well as singer Jeff Tweedy's marital problems. Unlike previous albums, Summerteeth was...

, and Sky Blue Sky. The band joined Scott in Valencia
Valencia, California
Valencia is an affluent planned community located in the City of Santa Clarita, California and Los Angeles County, California, U.S. in the northwestern corner of the Santa Clarita Valley, adjacent to Interstate 5. In 1987, it was one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 to mix the album. According to lead singer Jeff Tweedy
Jeff Tweedy
Jeffrey Scot "Jeff" Tweedy is an American songwriter, musician and leader of the band Wilco. Tweedy joined rockabilly band The Plebes with high school friend Jay Farrar in the early 1980s, but Tweedy's musical interests caused one of Farrar's brothers to quit...

, the band "allow[ed] [themselves] a little bit more leeway in terms of sculpting the sound in the studio and doing overdubs and using the studio as another instrument".

On May 13, 2009, the album leaked
Internet leak
An Internet leak occurs when a party's confidential information is released to the public on the Internet. Various types of information and data can be, and have been, "leaked" to the Internet, the most common being personal information, computer software and source code, and artistic works such...

 on the internet, and Wilco promptly responded by streaming the album for free on their website. The stream resulted in over 100,000 visits to Wilco's website on the 13th. The band also suggested that those who downloaded the leaked copy make a charitable donation to Inspiration Corporation, an organization that assists low-income families in Chicago. Blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

ger Mike Masnick
Mike Masnick
Michael "Mike" Masnick is the CEO and founder of Techdirt, a weblog that focuses on technology news and tech-related issues...

 praised Wilco for their response to the leak, contrasting it to the reactionary response from 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

 following the leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a 2009 American action film based on the Marvel Comics' fictional character Wolverine. The fourth installment in the X-Men film series, it was released worldwide on May 1, 2009...

.

Sound

The album has been invariably described as the band's most accessible and upbeat since their early albums, with The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

 stating that it "recall[s] the simplicity of the band's early LPs A.M.
A.M. (album)
A.M. is the debut album of Chicago-based alternative rock band Wilco, released on March 28, 1995. The album was released only months after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, an alternative country band that was the predecessor of Wilco...

and Being There
Being There (album)
Being There is the second album by Chicago-based rock band Wilco. Despite its release as a nineteen-song double album, Being There was sold at a single album price due to a deal between lead singer Jeff Tweedy and Reprise Records...

." Matthew Perpetua of Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...

 concurs, arguing that on the album "the disparate strains within the group's catalog have somehow flowed together into a unifying aesthetic", with the album touching on all of Wilco's various styles and guises in the past, which Perpetua identifies as "alt-country, Americana, neo-folk, quasi-experimental, and, if you insist, "dad rock."" "Country Disappeared" was described by the 20 Watts music blog as Dylanesque
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, with reviewer Eric Vilas-Boas praising it for "play[ing] like a classic Americana tune." Critic Jonathan Cohen also noted "Deeper Down" for its "wealth of sonic details".

Themes

Tweedy summarised the main theme of the album as the acceptance of life's uncertainties, stating
I think there's a liberating nature to that concept [...] It allows for a playfulness and an engagement in life that is more enjoyable than the alternative. I've aspired to convey some of those things for a long time now, maybe not so clearly before because it hasn't been so clear to me. But I do believe that the greater ability you have to tolerate ambiguity, the more successfully you can steer your life. The alternative point of view – the complete dismissal of ambiguity, trying to rationalise irrationality – can be very destructive.
This theme is manifested, for example, in the line from "Deeper Down" which goes "I adore the meaninglessness of the 'this' we can't express."

The album's lyrics portray both dark and light subject matter, from "Bull Black Nova", which is written from the point of view of a man who just killed his girlfriend, to the Feist duet "You and I", which treats two lovers trying to keep a relationship together.

Title

The album was named after the band because it "[felt] like what the band was meant to be". According to Tweedy the band "struggled with a lot of other titles that felt more exemplary of what the music was. But nothing else felt quite so succinct."

Promotion

Wilco appeared on The Colbert Report to play "Wilco (the song)" and promote 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

. Wilco embarked on a twenty-one show tour to promote the album starting on June 12, 2009. The tour concluded with a performance at the 10,000 Lakes Festival
10,000 Lakes Festival
The 10,000 Lakes Festival was an annual four-day music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, at the Soo Pass Ranch that was held since 2003. 10KLF is currently on hiatus due to financial losses and was not held in 2010. Its name refers to Minnesota's nickname, "The Land of 10,000 Lakes"...

 in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

.

The song "You Never Know" was released as the first single. They performed the song on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show that featured Conan O'Brien as host from June 1, 2009 to January 22, 2010 as part of NBC's long-running Tonight Show franchise...

on June 24, 2009. The song reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Triple A Chart
Adult album alternative
Adult album alternative is a radio format. A spinoff from the album-oriented rock format, its roots trace to the 1960s and 1970s from the earlier freeform and progressive formats....



The song "You and I" was performed on The Late Show with David Letterman on July 14, 2009.

Reception

Wilco (the album) received generally favorable reviews, garnering a 76/100 critic score and an 8.1/10 user score on MetaCritic. The New Musical Express noted that Wilco "covered all bases this time; pushing themselves to experiment while still celebrating what makes their music so catchy and compelling," while Paste Magazine described the record as "full of thoughtful, artfully crafted lyrics wrapped in memorable hooks that should stand the test of time." Other reviewers made note of the creative longevity of the band, with Pitchfork citing it as the "work of veterans unafraid to express mature emotions with an appropriate level of musical depth and nuance" and The Record Review remarking that "in their fifteenth year, Wilco is still crafting albums that are both melodic and relevant."

Track listing

All songs by Jeff Tweedy (except where noted).
  1. "Wilco (The Song)" – 2:59
  2. "Deeper Down" (Tweedy, Sansone) – 2:59
  3. "One Wing" – 3:42
  4. "Bull Black Nova" – 5:39
  5. "You and I"  – 3:26
  6. "You Never Know" – 4:21
  7. "Country Disappeared" – 4:02
  8. "Solitaire" – 3:04
  9. "I'll Fight" – 4:23
  10. "Sonny Feeling" – 4:13
  11. "Everlasting Everything" – 3:58


iTunes bonus track
  1. "Dark Neon" – 4:24

Cover versions

American alternative rock band Jimmy Eat World
Jimmy Eat World
Jimmy Eat World is an American alternative rock band from Mesa, Arizona, that formed in 1993. The band is composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Jim Adkins, guitarist and backing vocalist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind....

 covered "You and I" for the deluxe version of its 2010 album Invented
Invented (album)
Invented is the seventh studio album by American rock band Jimmy Eat World, released on September 28, 2010 through Interscope Records. Recorded primarily at the band's home-based studio, the album was co-produced by Mark Trombino, who had previously worked on the band's earlier material; Static...

.

Personnel

  • Jeff Tweedy
    Jeff Tweedy
    Jeffrey Scot "Jeff" Tweedy is an American songwriter, musician and leader of the band Wilco. Tweedy joined rockabilly band The Plebes with high school friend Jay Farrar in the early 1980s, but Tweedy's musical interests caused one of Farrar's brothers to quit...

     - vocals
    Singing
    Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

    , electric guitar
    Electric guitar
    An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

    , acoustic guitar
    Acoustic guitar
    An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

    , 12-string acoustic guitar, 12-string electric guitar
  • John Stirratt
    John Stirratt
    John Stirratt is the bassist and multi-instrumentalist for Wilco, and The Autumn Defense.Stirratt was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 26, 1967 and grew up in nearby Mandeville. He attended Mandeville High School and the University of Mississippi...

     - bass, electric guitar, background vocals
    Backing vocalist
    A backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...

  • Nels Cline
    Nels Cline
    Nels Cline is an American guitarist and composer, currently the lead guitarist of alternative rock band Wilco. David Carr of the New York Times describes Cline as "one of the best guitarists in any genre."-Career:...

     - electric guitar, lap steel
    Lap steel guitar
    The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, an instrument derived from and similar to the guitar. The player changes pitch by pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings instead of by pressing strings against the fingerboard....

    , electric "shorty" 12-string, loops
    Music loop
    In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...

    , electric 12-string guitar, slide guitar
    Slide guitar
    Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...

  • Pat Sansone
    Pat Sansone
    Pat Sansone is a multi-instrumentalist in the rock bands Wilco and The Autumn Defense.Sansone was born in Meridian, Mississippi...

     - Wurlitzer electric piano
    Wurlitzer electric piano
    Wurlitzer 200A|250px|thumbThe Wurlitzer electric piano was one of a series of electromechanical stringless pianos manufactured and marketed by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, Corinth, Mississippi, U.S. and Tonawanda, New York...

    , harpsichord
    Harpsichord
    A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

    , Fender
    Fender
    Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, commonly referred to as simply Fender, of Scottsdale, Arizona is a manufacturer of stringed instruments and amplifiers, such as solid-body electric guitars, including the Stratocaster and the Telecaster...

     Rhodes
    Rhodes piano
    The Rhodes piano is an electro-mechanical piano, invented by Harold Rhodes during the fifties and later manufactured in a number of models, first in collaboration with Fender and after 1965 by CBS....

    , Mellotron
    Mellotron
    The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...

    , dulcimer
    Appalachian dulcimer
    The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings. It is native to the Appalachian region of the United States...

    , celeste
    Celesta
    The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...

    , acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano
    Piano
    The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

    , field organ, Hammond organ
    Hammond organ
    The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...

    , tambourine
    Tambourine
    The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....

    , pump organ, Optigan
    Optigan
    The Optigan was an electronic keyboard instrument designed for the consumer market. The name stems from the instrument's reliance on pre-recorded optical soundtracks to reproduce sound...

     organ, background vocals
  • Mikael Jorgensen
    Mikael Jorgensen
    Mikael Jorgensen is lead pianist and keyboardist for the band Wilco as well as a member of the band Pronto. He first appeared on Wilco's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born. On that album, he received songwriting credit for "Hell is Chrome" and "Theologians"...

     - piano, bowed piano, synthesizer
    Synthesizer
    A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

    , Hammond organ, background vocals
  • Glenn Kotche
    Glenn Kotche
    Glenn Kotche is an American drummer and composer, best known for his involvement in the band Wilco. He was named the 41st greatest drummer of all time by Gigwise in 2008.Prior to working with Wilco, Kotche released a four-track album...

     - drums, percussion, chimes, cimbalom, gunpowder
  • Jason Tobias - slide cimbalom
  • Leslie Feist - vocals
  • Neil Finn
    Neil Finn
    Neil Mullane Finn, OBE is a New Zealand Pop recording artist. Along with his brother Tim Finn, he was the co-frontman for Split Enz and is now frontman for Crowded House...

     - background vocals
  • Dave Max Crawford - trumpet
    Trumpet
    The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...


Charts

Chart (2009) Peak
position
Finnish Albums Chart 38
Swedish Albums Chart 31
Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

4
U.S. Alternative Albums 1
U.S. Rock Albums 2
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