The Top 20 Jeff Tweedy Songs: #2 “Ashes Of American Flags”

Videos by American Songwriter

Wilco

“Ashes of American Flags”
Band: Wilco
Album: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
Co-Writer: Jay Bennett

Key lyric: “I wonder why we listen to poets, when nobody gives a fuck/How hot and sorrowful, this machine begs for luck.”

The emotional centerpiece of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot features some of Jeff Tweedy’s all-time finest lyrics. Each  verse is an individual nugget of gold, packed with rich and compelling imagery. “I want a good life, with a nose for things. A fresh wind and bright sky, to enjoy my suffering.” The chorus cries out for reincarnation as a cure-all for the accumulated bad karma of daily living: “I know I would die if I could come back new.”

Wilco broke the mold with this one.