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About

Genius Annotation

The opening song on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot looks at a man who feels isolated and alone in the big city after a tumultuous relationship, seemingly ended by his own misdeeds.

In Sam Jones' documentary named after this song, Nonesuch Records executive David Bither was excited about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot after hearing the first 30 seconds of this song.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did Wilco say about "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"?
Genius Answer

Jeff Tweedy on the lyrics in a 2021 interview at the Connecticut Forum:

Well, mostly they’re nonsense… but they mean something to me that I couldn’t say at the time. And I still can’t quite say it, but I feel it every time I sing it. And that’s kind of an element, to me, of poetry, and if I could say it some other way with language and have it make more sense, it wouldn’t feel the same way. […] What I’m really trying to get at is, is to get how I feel across. So, that song, like a lot of my songs, has a lot of imagery and seemingly abstract language, and then what I think of as a, just a turning and looking straight at the audience, and saying, “I’m trying to break your heart, I don’t know how.” And that’s what I really want to do with this song, that’s what I really want to do with every song, basically, is find a way into your heart. To do that, I have to break it. So, that song, to me, is always, every night I sing it, it’s that moment when I look at the crowd and I want them to get that that’s how I feel. I feel very strongly that that’s what I’m supposed to be doing with this silly piece of art.

Credits
Produced By
Written By
Mixing Engineer
Mastering Engineer
Recorded At
The Loft (Chicago, Illinois)
Release Date
April 23, 2002
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Interpolations
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Covers
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