59. Wilco, "A Shot in the Arm" (1999)

(listen)

I first heard this on the Summerteeth album, which I thought was pretty good even though it took awhile before I was inspired enough to sit down and sort it all out. That process, or something like it, was more the result of the 2002 documentary about Wilco and their later breakthrough album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I never liked that album so much, but I was more or less instantly disposed toward the documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, because it's got one of the great titles—it could work as well for a novel, poem, regular movie, short story, or even just something to say to people. The movie bogged down some when it went into the weeds of unattractive band squabbles, and Jay Bennett (who died this past May) did not appear to me to be well treated by his bandmates or the filmmaker. But it made a convincing case that the band belongs to Jeff Tweedy anyway and the live playing is something else again, persuading me once and for all that Wilco is genuinely a force to be reckoned with. I have a memory—memory, that troublesome thing—that the movie is where "Shot in the Arm" really came screaming into my life, but now I'm not entirely positive it's in there and I can't find a song listing. In the ongoing tally of drug songs I'm adding up in this list, it has to count, for the title if nothing else, although the album is more generally about a failing marriage and the song does work on that level too. It starts off jaunty, enters in with dense and evocative lyrics, and at the chorus moves quickly into stratospheric realms. "Baby all I need is a shot in the arm"—that's your cue to turn it up.