I recently sat down to do something both extremely important and obviously impossible: rank my ten favorite Wilco songs.
There’s a lot to choose from, and cutting the catalog down to ten was much harder than I expected. In the video above, I walk through the full list and explain why each song made the cut. Below, I’ve also written out the ranking for those who prefer to read (or who want to argue with me more efficiently).
Watch first if you want the full case for each pick. Then tell me where I went wrong.
The Definitive, Official, All-Time Top 10 Wilco Songs
For all time. For all of human history. Heretofore.
Ranking Wilco songs is a ridiculous exercise.
They have thirteen proper studio albums, the Mermaid Avenue records, EPs, rarities, live versions, and assorted odds and ends. There are probably over 200 tracks to choose from at this point, and as a longtime Wilco fan I could pretty easily put together a Top 50.
But where’s the fun in that?
So I have done the necessary work and produced the definitive, official, indisputable Top 10 Wilco songs of all time.
You are welcome.
Naturally, if you disagree, feel free to tell me exactly how wrong I am. Better yet, give me your own Top 10.
Here’s mine.
10. “Far, Far Away”
I love the dreamy, slow-dance atmosphere of this song.
The electric piano is a huge part of it for me, along with that sleepy country sound that Wilco did so beautifully in its early years. The whole thing feels like driving down a quiet highway at night on your way to see someone you love.
There really isn’t another song by another band that sounds quite like it.
It’s understated, romantic, strange, and unmistakably Wilco.
9. “War on War”
There’s something beautifully paradoxical about this one.
You have the idea of a “war on war,” and then music that somehow manages to feel restrained and energetic at the same time. It never completely explodes, but it always feels as though it might.
This is one of my favorite Wilco songs when I need to get moving. It has a momentum to it—a groove that keeps pushing forward without ever becoming obvious.
Lyrically, it isn’t one of Tweedy’s most complicated songs. It’s just fun.
And Wilco has always been unusually good at making “fun” sound weird.
8. “Via Chicago”
If “Far, Far Away” is the peaceful version of this particular Wilco mood, “Via Chicago” may be its demented cousin.
The song has that same sleepy spaciousness, but everything feels slightly unstable. It breathes. It wanders. It opens up into strange places.
One of Jeff Tweedy’s greatest gifts is melody, and sometimes his melodies are strongest when he simply gives them room. “Via Chicago” has that quality where I never feel as though I’ve completely gotten to the bottom of it.
Every time I hear it, it somehow sounds fresh.
And the live versions are phenomenal.
Honestly, if I made this list again tomorrow, I might rank it even higher.
7. “California Stars”
This may have been the first Wilco song I ever heard.
It was certainly the first one I really loved.
There’s something magical about the landscape this song creates. It feels huge and Western and open: a night under the stars with friends or family, somewhere the horizon seems to go on forever.
Of course, the lyrics are Woody Guthrie’s rather than Tweedy’s, which somehow makes the song even more remarkable. Tweedy doesn’t sound like a guy merely performing somebody else’s words. He sounds as though he has found the emotional center of them.
It’s beautiful, simple, endlessly singable, and perhaps the ultimate Wilco road-trip song.
6. “One Sunday Morning”
This is the Wilco I wish we got even more often.
“One Sunday Morning” is long, patient, spacious, and completely uninterested in rushing anywhere. The band simply lets the song exist.
With musicians as good as the current Wilco lineup, I love hearing them stretch out like this. The arrangement unfolds gradually, almost casually, while the lyrical story gives the song an emotional gravity that grows as it continues.
It’s one of those pieces where the length is the point.
You don’t really listen to it and think, This is a twelve-minute song.
You just enter into it.
5. “Impossible Germany”
Here we arrive at one of the greatest guitar performances in the Wilco catalog.
Sky Blue Sky was the first album featuring what has now become the long-established six-person Wilco lineup (Wilco 2.0 as I like to call it), and “Impossible Germany” shows exactly what this version of the band could do.
The song develops patiently until the guitar work takes over, and that instrumental section is the real centerpiece for me.
There’s a little of that Marquee Moon-era Television feeling in it: guitars interacting, circling one another, building something larger without becoming bombastic.
As for what the song is actually about?
Something involving the difficulty of communication, presumably.
But this one makes the list because of the guitars.
4. “Jesus, Etc.”
Great lyrics. Great melody. Great arrangement.
There’s an extraordinary restraint to “Jesus, Etc.,” and unlike some later Tweedy material where I occasionally wish he would push things harder, here the restraint is exactly right.
The song never needs to announce its emotional power.
It simply has it.
There’s also something uncanny about hearing those lyrics in the larger historical context surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I won’t attempt a full interpretation here, but the song has acquired a weight that extends far beyond its gorgeous melody.
It may be the finest example of Wilco doing more by doing less.
3. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”
This is pure Wilco atmosphere.
The chord progression is relatively simple, but the soundscape surrounding it makes the song feel enormous.
Like “Via Chicago,” it seems to breathe. It unfolds rather than progresses. You can listen to it dozens of times without ever feeling as though you’ve completely figured out what it is doing.
And the lyrics are among Tweedy’s best.
It’s an incredible opening track.
Just not their best opening track.
More on that shortly.
2. “A Shot in the Arm”
For me, this is the definitive live Wilco song.
The studio version is excellent, but seeing Wilco perform it is something else entirely. The song keeps building toward that enormous release near the end, and by the time the whole band hits the climax it becomes pure adrenaline.
Every time I’ve seen Wilco live, it has been a highlight.
At this point, it almost feels like a song they have to play.
If someone asked me for a single track that captures the kinetic, cathartic side of Wilco, this might be the one.
It came very close to taking the top spot.
1. “Misunderstood”
But number one has to be “Misunderstood.”
For me, this is Wilco’s definitive song, and the best opening track on any of their albums.
There is something almost otherworldly about it.
After A.M., Wilco could easily have remained a very good alt-country band. “Misunderstood,” opening Being There, announced almost immediately that they were going to become something much stranger and more ambitious.
Where did this song come from?
It is slow, abrasive, beautiful, experimental, funny, melancholy, and incredibly powerful.
It also remains a monster live track, which is remarkable considering how little it resembles a conventional rock anthem.
That may be the thing Wilco does better than almost anyone: a song doesn’t have to be fast or loud to generate tremendous force.
Sometimes the slow ones hit harder.
And for me, none hits harder than “Misunderstood.”
So That’s the List
The completely authoritative ranking:
* Misunderstood
* A Shot in the Arm
* I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
* Jesus, Etc.
* Impossible Germany
* One Sunday Morning
* California Stars
* Via Chicago
* War on War
* Far, Far Away
Obviously, you agree with all of this.
But in the unlikely event that you don’t, tell me what I missed.
What song belongs here that I left out? What did I rank way too high? What did I rank criminally low?
And most importantly:
What’s your Top 10?
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