"Company In My Back" as written by and Jeff Tweedy....
I attack with love, pure bug beauty
I curl my lips and crawl up to you
I attack with love, pure bug beauty
I curl my lips and crawl up to you
And your afternoon
And I've been puking
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
Hide your soft skin, your sorrow is sunshine
Listen to my eyes
Hide your soft skin, your sorrow is sunshine
Listen to my eyes
They are hissing radiator tunes
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
You learn so slow, old radiant beauty
I'll curve my flight
You learn so slow, old radiant beauty
I'll curve my flight
Under your bended knee
And I will always die
I will always die
I will always die
So you can remember me
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit, there's a company in my back
There's a company in my back
I curl my lips and crawl up to you
I attack with love, pure bug beauty
I curl my lips and crawl up to you
And your afternoon
And I've been puking
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
Hide your soft skin, your sorrow is sunshine
Listen to my eyes
Hide your soft skin, your sorrow is sunshine
Listen to my eyes
They are hissing radiator tunes
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
You learn so slow, old radiant beauty
I'll curve my flight
You learn so slow, old radiant beauty
I'll curve my flight
Under your bended knee
And I will always die
I will always die
I will always die
So you can remember me
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit there's a company in my back
I move so slow, a steady crushing hand
Holy shit, there's a company in my back
There's a company in my back
Lyrics submitted by eastcidskl
"Company in my back" as written by Jeff Tweedy
Lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
The holy shit realisation that there's a (record) company pushing him down, quashing his talent (a steady crushing hand).
Now i look at it, the other lyrics do seem to refer to the songwriting process, he moves so slow, and the company wishes to rush him, concerned about spiralling costs. He attacks his work with love, he'll "curve his flight"; honing his art.
Perhaps the old radiant beauty is the album itself, which he nurtures vainly in the hope we "will remember" him for it, and could better words ever be found to describe the album than "your sorrow is sunshine"? For indeed it is.
What is the connection with "radiant" and "radiator"? the words are far too similar (and radiator far too random) for it to be a coincidence.
This brings about the tension of the song. Basically, the external pressures encourage the drinking and the drinking undermines the writing, which then brings about more of the pressure and more of the drinking. The drinking is referenced pretty explicitly in the small asides following the first and second verses (I'm excluding the chorus.) His reference to vomiting during "your afternoon" suggests that he's really not in any condition to work during the studio time that the company booked for him.
The verses, meanwhile, are the artist-protagonist's mangled attempts to convert his ideas into useful lyrics under these very unfavorable conditions. (A very good suggestion from earlier in the forum was that Tweedy was actually trying to adapt a poem he had written. It was probably something that he had imagined would one day work as a song, but now finds the verses unaccommodating.) Lyrics like "Hide your soft skin", "your sorrow is sunshine" "Listen to my eyes" are presented as a triptych of hackneyed "writerly" cliches that echo in his head and bog down the writing process. He can't help musing that if his bloodshot eyes really could make sounds, as the nonsense lyric would suggest, they would be "hissing radiator tunes" - just a bunch of atonal noise. Almost all of the verse lyrics are gaseous, overwrought attempts to render his thoughts poetically: "attack with love," "pure bug beauty" - just like "sorrow is sunshine" or "listen to my eyes" - are ridiculously strained attempts at creating metaphorical meaning through ironic lyrical constructions. The bridge of the song (beginning with "Under your bended knee" - note that the dummy is no longer atop the ventriloquist's bended knee, but rather under it) is a final drunken lament, this time in the imaginative, despairing voice of an artist wallowing in self-pity and frustration. Yes, he will "always die" - perhaps very soon - and the suits will have nothing to show for their badgering but his memory. Is that how they would prefer it to be?
So essentially I see the song as an elaborate plea to the higher-ups to lay off. The real cleverness here is that the plea is couched as airy poetry about the usual themes of love and beauty etc. The subaudition is that he can only do the artistic stuff he was presumably hired to do if the bosses would give him some space to work.
One more note: I think it's always very important to pay attention to the instrumentation when trying to interpret Wilco. In "Company in my Back," the band basically foreshadows the theme of the song with the echoing start-stop cadences of the opening riffs. The instrumentation in the verses, on the other hand, are rendered in wistful, melodic tones, with the organ riffs drifting off into the ether.
Pure Bug Beauty
Jeff Tweedy
I attack with love
folded, my wings
crawl up to you
and your afternoon
I’ve been puking
you move so slow
a steady crushing hand
over my body
a company
in my back
hide your soft skin
your sorrow in sunshine
listening to my eyes
they are full
of bloodful tunes
you learn so slow
old fleshy beauty
I curve my flight
under your bent knee
I will always die
so you can remember me
When he sees that she gets sad about his condition (your sorrow is sunshine) he feels her love most acutely. But in her sorrowful state, she doesn't expect his sudden passion (she learns so slow). He thinks she should know that look in his eyes, smouldering with love (hissing radiator tunes). He makes his moves, but still a bit slowly because of his migraine.
He crawls up to her and "crushes" her, his pure bug beauty.
I love this song.
I've found lots of ingenuous and imaginative comments, but I'm still convinced he's talking about a completely different matter: he's playing with a child.
That's why he attacks with love, and curl his lips, and crawl up to him/her.
It' the child that makes him move so slow, who feels the steady crushing hand, who's the company in his back. Who's got the soft skin that needs to be hidden from too much sunshine. Who can listen to an eye. If that's not what he intended, he inadvertedly created perhaps the most beautiful song ever made to listen to while you think about your baby child...
I move so slow (from the) steady crushing hand,
Holy shit, there's a company in my back.
"In my back" I always interpreted as almost like a malignant cancer.
That's just my thoughts. Lovely song.