Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “Random Name Generator”

As I write about in Wilcopedia (releasing 9/17; pre-order here), for a good part of the last decade, I was the “Wilco Examiner” for Examiner.com. It was a content farm that paid by the clicks, so I tried to spruce up my material, but as I mainly covered set-lists and linked to other content, it was pretty hard to make any kind of mark.

At one point though I started a series called Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight and it became a little more fun. Examiner.com may be gone (they folded in 2016), but you can still find some of my content as it was stolen by many sites, like here.

Anyway, I am resurrecting Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight and starting off with “Random Name Generator,” from Wilco’s ninth studio release Star Wars, which was a surprise release in the summer of 2015.

“Random Name Generator” (Jeff Tweedy)

With its revved-up hooky groove, and its playful lyrical conceit, “Random Name Generator,” which Tweedy said had grown out of the sessions for the side project Tweedy’s 2014 album Sukierae, was Star Wars’ obvious single. The cover of the 7-inch, which features a photo by Zoran Orlic, is at the top of this post.

“‘Random Name Generator’ is just such an incredibly fun one. I don’t know if there has ever been a song more fun to play live for the band than that song. There’s just something about the relentlessness of it. I feel like my heels grow to platform boots and my pants widen to bell bottoms during the course of that song, like a shapeshifter or something.”
-Jeff Tweedy in an interview with Josh Terry, Chicago Tribune (2016)

“Low voices rumble and guitars agitate on ‘Random Name Generator,’ all dense and menacing.” - Greg Kott, The Chicago Tribune (2015)

Since its live debut with the rest of the songs from Star Wars at the Pitchfork Music Festival at Chicago’s Union Park on July 17, 2015, the day after the album first became available online, the incredibly fun rocker, “Random Name Generator,” has been performed by Wilco way over 100 times. It is the most performed song off of Star Wars, with the “The Joke Explained” coming in at a close second.

More later...