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About

Genius Annotation

This song is about someone searching for answers; answers to questions that we cannot possibly conjure up an answer for. The questions are from someone going through a hard time and questioning the meaning of it all.

The song was originally titled “Jesus Don’t Cry,” but was labeled as “Jesus Etc.” during their final mixing/mastering sessions and the name stuck.

Though the song has strong ties to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was written prior to the attacks. In a Rolling Stone interview Jeff Tweedy stated about the album:

There were a lot of eerie echoes of 9/11 that I heard on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, maybe because some of the focus on that record was being introspective about America. I understood how people could hear that in it. I’m obviously very, very honored if anybody found any kind of consolation in that record, at that time or now.

Rolling Stone ranks “Jesus, Etc.” 67th on the magazine’s list of the 100 Best Songs of the 2000s, writing:

Calling down the redemptive power of love and music with verses that anticipated the imagery of 9/11, Jeff Tweedy’s finest moment was the right medicine at precisely the right time.

Q&A

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

What did Wilco say about "Jesus, Etc."?
Genius Answer

In a 2002 interview with The Nation, Wilco front-man Jeff Tweedy said of the song:

It’s one of the last things we recorded, and I think it’s one of the only things that Glenn, our [new] drummer, plays on that wasn’t a re-approach of something that we’d already recorded, or a song that had been around for a while. It’s one of the first songs of the new lineup and it came about very quickly. And then it got a really inspired performance. I don’t want to think that it’s just from a sense of newness. It’s just that Glenn is really great and I really love playing with him. And when I think about it–I haven’t really thought about it–I think that’s probably one of the first things that he really just got to approach without knowing what Ken [Coomer, former drummer] did. And that’s another thing that I’m excited about. In that song, there’s the first string arrangement that I’ve done untutored or without someone else charting stuff out and helping. John [Stirratt, bassist] and I kind of collaborated on that. I’m really happy with how it all panned out, because the goal was to have each section of the song commented on a little bit differently with the string texture. If you listen to it the parts change; each is varied from the one before it. I don’t know if someone who went to school for that stuff would think it’s good. I just listen to it and think, “How did that happen?”

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