Filed under: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot | Tags: 2002, 9/11, Alcohol, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, Kid A, Radiohead, Record Store, Relationship, September 11, Story, W, Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, YHF
I used to work at a record store, and one day an acquaintance of mine (at the time… She later became a friend) came in to buy a few albums. Being the typical snobby record store clerk, I decided to flip through her purchases for the day, only to come across Radiohead’s Kid A. I explained that I’m a big fan of Radiohead up until that album (I think The Bends was their best), and suggested she take a look at something else. She was a bit taken aback, and commented on how she had heard there were a lot of 9/11 references (even though the album came out way before) and that it had a lot of stuff going on at the same time. I walked her over to the “W” section and picked up a copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, handing it to her as I said she would be better off buying it.
She told me later that it was some of the best advice she had ever been given. She went out shortly after and bought Summerteeth and Being There, and told me that she cried at the end of the album’s opener, today’s track: “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.”
This song practically reeks of alcohol. There’s a seasick haze that hangs over the music and mumbled lyrics, which contain references to being an “American aquarium drinker” and “disposable Dixie cup drinker.” (Not to mention “You were so right when you said I’d been drinking.”) I think the narrator of the song is, to put it simply, a sad drunk. He’s looking back at a relationship from the end to the beginning. It’s really odd that he looks at it all backwards, but it’s pretty obvious. The first verse has the line “What was I thinking when I let go of you?” and slowly works it way to “What was I thinking when we said ‘hello’?” It takes you from the collapse of the relationship all the way to the first time they met, before he admits…
“I am trying to break your heart/Still, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t easy/I am trying to break your heart.”
It’s such a great line/title. It manages to say something that a lot of people do, but no one admits to. The narrator is vengeful, bitter, lonely, angry with himself, and impressively honest. What a song…
