Wednesday Wilco Song Spotlight: “You Never Know”

This week’s Song Spotlight shines on the first single from the band’s seventh studio release, Wilco (The Album):

“You Never Know” (Jeff Tweedy)

In the fourth episode of the popular 60s-set AMC TV series Mad Men, first broadcast on August 9, 2007, Roger Sterling - a senior partner at the fictitious ad firm Sterling Cooper, perfectly played by John Slattery - ponders, ‘Maybe every generation thinks the next one is the end of it all.’ *

In Wilco’s bright, poppy “You Never Know,” Jeff Tweedy offers a similar sentiment. “Come on children / You’re acting like children / Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.”

This song was considered by many to be a tribute to the post-Beatles solo work of George Harrison, with Justin Gerber of Consequence Of Sound likening the “I don’t care anymore” refrain to the hallelujahs of “My Sweet Lord.”

It briefly reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Adult Album Alternative chart in the summer of 2009, and was released as a seven-inch single, backed with the non-album B-side “Unlikely Japan.”

A nearly identical version of the song appears on the charity album The Sun Came Out by the Neil Finn project 7 Worlds Collide. The two-CD set, which also features contributions by Johnny Marr, Ed O’Brien, Sebastian Steinberg, Phil Selway, Lisa Germano, Don McGlashan, Bic Runga, Glenn Richards, KT Tunstall, and fellow Finn brothers Tim and Liam, was a benefit for Oxfam, a charitable organization focused on ending global poverty.

With Neil Finn, best known as the front man of the Australian pop rock band Crowded House, providing additional fuzz guitar, Wilco recorded the 7 Worlds Collide version of ‘You Never Know’ in December 2008 at Roundhead Studios in Auckland, New Zealand. It was released on August 31, 2009, two months after Wilco (The Album).

* This bit overlaps with a Wilcopedia (The Blog) post from last year entitled Mad Men & Wilco: That's Right, There Are Connections (10/10/19).

This is an edited excerpt from Wilcopedia by Daniel Cook Johnson, published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com). Order your copy here.

More later...