Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Encyclopedia
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the fourth album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 by 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...

-based rock band 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...

. The album was completed in 2001, but Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...

, a Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

 label, refused to release it. Wilco acquired the rights to the album when they left the label. In September 2001, Wilco streamed
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

 the entire album for free on their website. Wilco signed with Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...

 (another Warner label) in November of that year, and the album was officially released on April 23, 2002.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a critical and commercial success, and is their best selling album, with over 500,000 copies sold in the U.S. and topping the Pazz and Jop critics' poll for 2002. Critical success endured, and the album was widely listed among the greatest albums of the 2000s in many popular publications, including 3rd place in Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the 2000s. It was Wilco's first album with drummer 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...

, and the last with multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jay Bennett
Jay Bennett
Jay Walter Bennett was an American guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, and singer-songwriter, best known for his work with the band Wilco.-Early life and work with Wilco:...

.

Context

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...

 was touring to promote Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II is a 2000 album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, put to music written and performed by British singer Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco...

in May 2000 when 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...

 was invited to play at the Noise Pop festival in Chicago. The festival promoter offered to pair Tweedy with a collaborator of his choosing, and Tweedy decided to perform with Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (musician)
Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...

. Tweedy frequently played O'Rourke's album Bad Timing in his car while he traveled during the previous winter. O'Rourke was an accomplished producer as well as a musician, and had produced over two hundred albums by the time that Tweedy requested the collaboration. O'Rourke offered the services of drummer 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...

, and the trio performed at Double Door
Double Door
Double Door is a concert hall and nightclub located at 1572 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. The venue was first opened on June 12, 1994, and is co-owned by Andy Barrett, Sean Mulroney and Joe Shanahan...

 for the festival on May 14, 2000. Tweedy enjoyed the performance so much that he suggested that the trio record an album together. They chose the name Loose Fur
Loose Fur
Loose Fur is an American rock band comprising Wilco members Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, and Wilco collaborator Jim O'Rourke. The trio first convened in May 2000 in preparation for a Tweedy performance at a festival in Chicago. Tweedy was offered the opportunity to collaborate with an artist of...

, and recorded six songs during the following summer.

By the end of the year, the band had recorded enough demo tracks to release a fourth studio album (the working title was Here Comes Everybody), but the band was unhappy with some of the takes of the songs. This was attributed to the inflexibility of Ken Coomer
Ken Coomer
Ken Coomer was the last drummer for the band Uncle Tupelo as well as the drummer for Chicago based-band Wilco until Yankee Hotel Foxtrot...

's drumming. The band decided to bring Glenn Kotche into the studio to record with the band. Wilco officially replaced Coomer with Kotche in January 2001, a decision originally proposed by Tweedy and almost immediately approved by the rest of the band.

Jay Bennett
Jay Bennett
Jay Walter Bennett was an American guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, and singer-songwriter, best known for his work with the band Wilco.-Early life and work with Wilco:...

 recorded the entire album with Chris Brickley, and agreed with Tweedy that O'Rourke would be a good choice to mix the album, after a failed attempt by Bennett and Brickley to mix a few of the songs at CRC and after hearing O'Rourke's "audition mix". One of the conflicts, exhibited in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, was over the ten-second transition between "Ashes of American Flags" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". Bennett attempted to explain to Tweedy that there were several slightly different ways to approach the transition, each of which would yield slightly different results, but Tweedy explained that he just wanted the problem fixed, and was not concerned with understanding the different approaches. Bennett focused on the individual songs, while Tweedy focused on larger conceptual and thematic issues—a tried and true division of labor that had worked well on the four releases on which they co-wrote the material. In order to achieve the band's musical goals, Tweedy invited Jim O'Rourke into the studio to mix "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" , and the results impressed the band members. O'Rourke was then asked to mix the rest of the album.

The cover of the album is a picture of Marina City
Marina City
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, directly across from the Loop district...

 in the band's adopted hometown of 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...

. The album was named after a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet
Spelling alphabet
A spelling alphabet, radio alphabet, or telephone alphabet is a set of words which are used to stand for the letters of an alphabet. Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts...

 that Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box set The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. On the fourth track of the album , a woman repeats the words "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" numerous times; a clip from this track was placed in the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song "Poor Places". Irdial sued Wilco for copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

, and a settlement was reached out of court.

After the album's completion, Tweedy decided to remove Bennett from the band. The album was completed in 2001, and Tweedy believed it to be ready for release.

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 photographer Sam Jones contacted Wilco in 2000 about producing a documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 about the creation of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Jones shot over eighty hours of footage for I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (named after the opening song of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) beginning on the day that Coomer was dismissed from the band. The footage was edited down to ninety-two minutes, and the film was released to theaters in 2002. The documentary has received generally positive reviews.

Dismissal from Reprise Records

In 2001, AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

 merged with Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

 to form AOL Time Warner. Time Warner's market share of the music industry had dropped by almost five percent from the mid-1990s, and the new executives ordered the termination of six hundred jobs. One of those jobs was Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...

 president Howie Klein, who had been a big supporter of Wilco on the label. Klein's dismissal caused head A&R representative David Kahne
David Kahne
David Kahne is an American record producer. Kahne started his musical career as a working musician and then became notable for his role as in-house producer and engineer at 415 Records, the first American new wave music label, and for his subsequent roles as Vice President of A&R at Columbia...

 to be in charge of deciding whether to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Kahne assigned A&R representative Mio Vukovic to monitor the progress of the album. Vukovic was unhappy about the album because he felt that his suggestions were not being considered. Kahne wanted a radio single from the album, but he felt that none of the songs were suitable for commercial release. In June 2001, the album was officially rejected and Vukovic suggested that the band independently release the album.

Josh Grier, Wilco's lawyer, was able to negotiate a buy-out of the band from Reprise. The band would keep the rights to the album if they paid Reprise $50,000. Before Wilco could accept the deal, Reprise called the band and changed their offer to give the band the rights to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for free. Despite Reprise's efforts to accommodate Wilco's departure, the process marred public relations after an article in the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

described what had happened.

Wilco had planned on releasing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on September 11, 2001, but Tweedy did not want a change in record labels to significantly delay the release of the album. Within weeks of being released from the label and Jay Bennett leaving the band, MP3s of all tracks from the album began to appear on file sharing networks. In a decision aimed at discouraging the pirating of lower quality MP3s and having some control over how the album was distributed, on September 18, 2001, Wilco began streaming the entirety of the album on their official website. The wilcoworld.net website registered over fifty thousand hits that day, eight times as much as typical daily traffic. Traffic to the website quadrupled the normal traffic over the next few months. The following tour was a success financially, and members of Wilco observed that fans sang along with unreleased songs on the album.

Release on Nonesuch Records

Both independent and major record labels bid for the right to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, including Artemis Records and Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records
Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...

. Tweedy denied the bids of record labels that did not have a roster of signed artists that matched his liking. He also decided to ignore small independent companies because he wanted to be able to put the album out for a large audience and felt that they would be unable to produce more than 100,000 records. Wilco decided to sign with AOL Time Warner subsidiary Nonesuch Records in November 2001, basing the decision on the label's small size and artist-friendly atmosphere. Wilco recorded and produced Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with Reprise, received the rights to the album for a fee of $50,000, and then sold it back to a different AOL Time Warner affiliate.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was commercially released by Nonesuch Records on April 23, 2002. The album sold 55,573 copies during its first week of release, peaking on the 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...

 album chart at number thirteen. The album was certified Gold
RIAA certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards...

 by the Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...

 and has sold over 590,000 units.

The More Like the Moon
More Like the Moon
Wilco's More Like the Moon EP was originally released as a bonus disc to the Australian version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The band ended up releasing the EP via the band's website in 2003 to any who had bought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot...

EP (also called Bridge and Australian EP) was originally released as a bonus disc to the Australian version of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The EP comprised six songs that were recorded but not released during the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions including a re-working of "Kamera". On the one-year anniversary of the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco uploaded the EP onto their official website, and offered it for free to anyone who purchased the album. The band would later allow anyone to download the EP for free off the website, regardless of whether they had purchased the full-length album.

Reception

The album received positive reviews from media outlets such as 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...

and BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

 Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...

 critics poll. Brent Sirota 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...

 gave the album a perfect 10.0 rating, noting that the album was "simply a masterpiece." David Fricke
David Fricke
David Fricke is a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, where he writes predominantly on rock music. In the 1990s, he was managing editor before stepping down.-Background:David Fricke is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania...

 of 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...

praised its resemblance to psychedelia while Allmusic writer Zac Johnson lauded its musical complexity.

Trouser Press
Trouser Press
Trouser Press was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow Who fan Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" ...

was one of the few major media outlets that did not give the album a good review, stating that "more time spent in the songwriting lab might have yielded material more suitable to the evident studio effort invested and brought Wilco closer to making a truly great album." Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...

 gave the album a one-star honorable mention rating, stating that he found the lyrics and vocals in general to be boring.

Though Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was recorded before the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

, critics perceived references in the album to the attacks. For example, Jeff Gordinier of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

compared the two towers of Marina City
Marina City
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, directly across from the Loop district...

 to the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...

 towers.

The album was voted as the 100th "Greatest Album Ever" in a 2006 Q Magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

 poll. In 2008, Rolling Stone critic Tom Moon listed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot among the 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot found a place on many lists of the greatest albums of the 2000s. Rolling Stone ranked the album at number three on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade. 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...

 put the album at number four on the Top 200 Albums of the 2000s. The alternative music website also named "Poor Places" and "Jesus, Etc." as the 147th and 61st best songs of the decade, respectively. Paste
Paste (magazine)
Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...

named the album the second-best album of the decade.

Personnel

Wilco
  • Jeff Tweedy - vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, horn arrangments, string arrangments
  • Jay Bennett – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, organ, bass, drums, percussion, lap steel, vibraphone, bells, vocals
  • John Stirratt – bass, vocals, horn arrangments, string arrangments
  • Leroy Bach - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, glockenspiel
  • Glenn Kotche - drums, percussion, cimbalom, siren, chimes


Additional Personnel
  • Ken Coomer - drums, percussion
  • Fred Lonberg-Holm – keyboards, synthesizers, percussion
  • Craig Christiansen - programming
  • Jessy Greene - violin on "Jesus Etc."
  • Steve Rookie – mastering
    Audio mastering
    Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...

  • Chris Brickley – engineering, mixing
  • Jim O'Rourke – engineering, mixing
  • Wilco – producer
    Record producer
    A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

  • Sam Jones – photography
    Photography
    Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...



Credits taken from liner notes.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Jeff Tweedy; all music composed by Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett except where noted.
  1. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (Tweedy) – 6:57
  2. "Kamera" – 3:29
  3. "Radio Cure" – 5:08
  4. "War on War
    War on War
    "War on War" is a 2002 single by American band Wilco from their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.-Track listing:#"War on War" – 3:49#"The Good Part" – 2:47#"I'm the Man Who Loves You"  – 3:36...

    " – 3:47
  5. "Jesus, Etc." – 3:50
  6. "Ashes of American Flags" – 4:43
  7. "Heavy Metal Drummer" (Tweedy) – 3:08
  8. "I'm the Man Who Loves You" – 3:55
  9. "Pot Kettle Black" – 4:00
  10. "Poor Places" – 5:15
  11. "Reservations" (Tweedy) – 7:22
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