Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Studio album by Wilco
Released	September 29, 2001[a]
Recorded	Late 2000 – July 6, 2001[3]
Studio	The Loft, Chicago[b]
Genre	Art rock
Length	51:51
Label	Self-released (original) Nonesuch (retail)
Producer	Wilco
Wilco chronology
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II (2000) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) A Ghost Is Born (2004)
Singles from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
"Heavy Metal Drummer" Released: April 23, 2002 "War on War" Released: May 21, 2002

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the fourthstudio album by the Americanrock bandWilco, originally self-released on September 29, 2001, on Wilco's website as streamed audio, and later as a retail release on April 23, 2002, throughNonesuch Records. Recording sessions for the album began in late 2000. These sessions, which were documented for the filmI Am Trying to Break Your Heart, were marred by conflicts including a switch in drummers and disagreements among the band members and engineers about songs. Despite this, the album was mostly completed by early 2001. The album showcased a more atmospheric and experimental sound than the band's previous work, and has been described asart rock^[4][5] andindie rock^[6] by music critics. It was the band's first album with drummerGlenn Kotche, and last with multi-instrumentalist and songwriterJay Bennett.

Reprise Records, Wilco's record label at the time, refused to release the album as they felt unhappy about the result; this would lead to Wilco's departure from Reprise. The band subsequently acquired the rights to the album and laterstreamed the entire album for free on their website on September 29, 2001, 11 days after the planned release date. In November of that year, Wilco signed withNonesuch Records, who gave the album its first official retail release on April 23, 2002.Yankee Hotel Foxtrot received widespread acclaim from music critics at release, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of the 2000s and of all time.^[7] It is also Wilco's best-selling work, having reached number 13 on theBillboard 200 chart.^[8] In 2020,Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 225 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.^[9]

"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"

The first track from the album, this song features an intro oncrotales composed by Glenn Kotche.^[10]

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Wilco was touring to promoteMermaid Avenue Vol. II in May 2000 when lead singerJeff Tweedy was invited to play at theNoise Pop Festival inChicago. The festival promoter offered to pair Tweedy with a collaborator of his choosing, and Tweedy decided to perform withJim O'Rourke. Tweedy frequently played O'Rourke's albumBad Timing in his car while he traveled during the previous winter. O'Rourke was an accomplished producer as well as a musician, and had produced over 200 albums by the time that Tweedy requested the collaboration. O'Rourke offered the services of drummerGlenn Kotche, and the trio performed atDouble Door for the festival on May 14, 2000. Tweedy enjoyed the performance so much that he suggested that the trio record an album together. They chose the nameLoose Fur, and recorded six songs during the following summer.^[11]

By the end of the year, Wilco had recorded enough demo tracks to release a fourth studio album. Its working title wasHere Comes Everybody, which was later scrapped in favour ofYankee Hotel Foxtrot. Australian bandSpacey Jane later released an album titledHere Comes Everybody in 2022 in tribute to the working title, which they sought approval from Wilco for prior to release.^[12] Despite having enough songs for an album, the band was unhappy with some of the demo takes. This was attributed to the inflexibility ofKen Coomer's drumming. According toAmerican Songwriter, "virtually every attempt [Tweedy] made to steer Coomer toward the percussive sound he had envisioned for the record sparked a fight."^[13] The band decided to bring Kotche into the studio to record with the band. Wilco officially replaced Coomer with Kotche in January 2001, a decision originally proposed by Tweedy and almost immediately approved by the rest of the band.^[14]

GuitaristJay Bennett and Chris Brickley served as the audio engineers, and agreed with Tweedy that O'Rourke would be a good choice tomix the album, after a failed attempt to mix a few of the songs at theChicago Recording Company and after hearing O'Rourke's "audition mix". One of the conflicts, exhibited in the filmI Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, was over the ten-second transition between "Ashes of American Flags" and "Heavy Metal Drummer". Bennett attempted to explain to Tweedy that there were several slightly different ways to approach the transition, each of which would yield slightly different results, but Tweedy explained that he just wanted the problem fixed, and was not concerned with understanding the different approaches. Bennett focused on the individual songs, while Tweedy focused on larger conceptual and thematic issues—a tried and true division of labor that had worked well on the four releases on which they co-wrote the material.^[15]

In order to achieve the band's musical goals, Tweedy invited Jim O'Rourke into the studio to mix "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", and the results impressed the band members. Jim O'Rourke was officially in Wilco from that point. He recorded 6 of the 12 tracks on the album. O'Rourke was then asked to mix the rest of the album.^[16] After the album's completion, Tweedy decided to remove Bennett from the band. The album was completed in 2001, and Tweedy believed it to be ready for release.^[17] The album was given the titleYankee Hotel Foxtrot, referencing a series of letters in thephonetic alphabet that Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box setThe Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. A clip from thisNumbers Station transmission was placed in theYankee Hotel Foxtrot song "Poor Places"; Irdial later sued Wilco forcopyright infringement, and a settlement was reached out of court.^[18] The cover of the album is a picture of the twoMarina City complex towers in the band's adopted hometown ofChicago.

Los Angeles photographerSam Jones contacted Wilco in 2000 about producing adocumentary film about the creation ofYankee Hotel Foxtrot. Jones shot over 80 hours of footage forI Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco beginning on the day that Coomer was dismissed from the band. The footage was edited down to 92 minutes, and the film was released to theaters in 2002.^[19] The documentary has received generally positive reviews.^[20]

In 2001,AOL merged withTime Warner to form AOL Time Warner. Time Warner's market share of the music industry had dropped almost five percent from the mid-1990s, and the new executives ordered the termination of 600 jobs. One of those jobs wasReprise Records presidentHowie Klein, who had been a big supporter of Wilco on the label. Klein's dismissal placed headA&R representativeDavid Kahne in charge of the decision whether to releaseYankee Hotel Foxtrot. Kahne assigned A&R representative Mio Vukovic to monitor the progress of the album. Vukovic was unhappy about the album because he felt that his suggestions were not being considered. Kahne wanted a radio single from the album, but he felt that none of the songs were suitable for commercial release. In June 2001, the album was officially rejected and Vukovic suggested that the band independently release the album.^[21]

Josh Grier, Wilco's lawyer, was able to negotiate a buy-out of the band from Reprise. The band would keep the rights to the album if they paid Reprise $50,000. Before Wilco could accept the deal, Reprise called the band and changed their offer to give the band the rights toYankee Hotel Foxtrot for free. Despite Reprise's efforts to accommodate Wilco's departure, the process marred public relations after an article in theChicago Tribune described what had happened.^[22]

Wilco had planned on releasingYankee Hotel Foxtrot on September 11, 2001, but Tweedy did not want a change in record labels to significantly delay the release of the album. Within weeks of being released from the label and Jay Bennett leaving the band, MP3s of all tracks from the album began to appear on file sharing networks. In a decision aimed at discouraging the downloading of lower quality unlicensedMP3s and having some control over how the album was distributed, on September 29, 2001, Wilco began streaming the entirety of the album on their official website.^[1] The wilcoworld.net website registered over 50,000 hits that day, eight times as much as typical daily traffic.^[23] Traffic to the website quadrupled the normal traffic over the next few months. The following tour was a success financially, and members of Wilco observed that fans sang along with songs from the unreleased album.^[24]

Both major and independent record labels made bids to releaseYankee Hotel Foxtrot, includingArtemis Records andNonesuch Records. Tweedy denied the bids of record labels that did not have a roster of signed artists that he liked. He also decided to ignore small, independent labels because he wanted to be able to put the album out for a large audience and felt that very small labels would be unable to produce more than 100,000 copies. Wilco decided to sign withWarner Music subsidiary Nonesuch Records in November 2001, basing the decision on the label's affiliation with a large company, but also Nonesuch's artist-friendly atmosphere. In the end, Wilco recorded and producedYankee Hotel Foxtrot with Reprise Records (a Warner label), received the rights to the album from Reprise for free, and then had it released by a different Warner label, Nonesuch Records.^[25]

TheMore Like the Moon EP (also calledBridge andAustralian EP) was originally released as a bonus disc to the Australian version ofYankee Hotel Foxtrot. The EP comprised six songs that were recorded but not released during theYankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions including a re-working of "Kamera". On the one-year anniversary of the release ofYankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco uploaded the EP onto their official website, and offered it for free to anyone who purchased the album. The band would later allow anyone to download the EP for free off the website, regardless of whether they had purchased the full-length album.^[26][27]

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album's release, Wilco performed the album in its entirety for four nights at theUnited Palace in New York City and three nights at theAuditorium Theater in Chicago. The band was joined by strings and horns sections in an attempt to perform the album as it was recorded. The band also announced reissues of the album, including a Super Deluxe version spanning 11 LPs which includes the original remastered album, demos, rare live recordings, and other alternate versions of the songs. These reissues were released on September 30, 2022. Pitchfork gave the reissue a perfect 10 rating, and naming it "Best New Reissue".^[28]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	87/100[29]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[30]
Blender	[31]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[32]
The Guardian	[33]
NME	8/10[34]
Pitchfork	10/10[35]
Q	[36]
Rolling Stone	[37]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[38]
Uncut	[39]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was acclaimed by critics upon release.^[29] Brent Sirota ofPitchfork gave the album aperfect 10 rating, noting that the album was "simply a masterpiece."^[35]David Fricke ofRolling Stone praised its resemblance topsychedelia whileAllMusic writer Zac Johnson lauded its musical "complexity".^[30][37]E! Online said that its "rich, exotic flavor gets more intense the longer you chew on it",^[29] whileStylus Magazine called it "a great album, and an outstanding place for prospective new Wilco fans to start."^[40]Billboard gave it a favorable review and called it "a more adventurous and rewarding release".^[41]The Austin Chronicle gave it four stars out of five and said that "After a while -- a familiarity period if you will -- it becomes clear that these songs are not only fully realized, they're damn near brilliant."^[42]Playlouder gave it four stars out of five and called it "The most worth-the-wait long-awaited album in the world ... ever? Could be ..."^[43]Uncut also gave the album four stars out of five and said, "The most common description of this much-discussed album over the past few months is that YHF is Americana'sKid A. In truth, it's more successful than that."^[29]Blender likewise gave it four stars out of five and stated: "Tweedy whittles down the arrangements and drops in enough experimental nuances to make the whole thing sound refreshingly lo-fi."^[29]Q likewise gave it four stars and called it "battered, bonkers and bewitching in equal parts" and that it "at last finds Wilco's 'interesting' phase become downright fascinating."^[29]Yahoo! Music UK gave it eight stars out of ten and said, "Tweedy takes conventional songforms birthed on his acoustic guitar and scrambles them completely, reassembled into fractured, dissonant epics with the help of the reliably brilliant Jim O'Rourke."^[44]

Trouser Press was one of the few major media outlets that did not give the album a good review, instead giving it an average review and stating that "more time spent in the songwriting lab might have yielded material more suitable to the evident studio effort invested and brought Wilco closer to making a truly great album."^[45]Robert Christgau gave the album a one-star honorable mention rating, describing the music as "purty" but stating that he found the lyrics and vocals in general to be boring.^[46]

ThoughYankee Hotel Foxtrot was recorded before theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks, critics noted a relevance in light of the attacks. For example, Jeff Gordinier ofEntertainment Weekly compared the two towers ofMarina City to theWorld Trade Center towers.^[32] Also containing similar themes are the songs "War on War" and "Ashes of American Flags" which contains the line "I would like to salute the ashes of American flags." The song "Jesus, Etc." also contains these lyrics:"Tall buildings shake, Voices escape singing sad sad songs ... Voices whine, Skyscrapers are scraping together, your voice is smoking."^[47]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was released by Nonesuch on April 23, 2002. The album sold 55,573 copies during its first week of release, peaking on the USBillboard 200 album chart at number 13.^[48][49] The album wascertified Gold by theRecording Industry Association of America and has sold over 590,000 units.^[50][51]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was voted as the best album of the year inThe Village VoicePazz & Jop critics poll.^[52] In 2008,Rolling Stone critic Tom Moon listedYankee Hotel Foxtrot among the1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. The album was also included in the book1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.^[53]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot found a place on many lists of the greatest albums of the 2000s.Rolling Stone ranked the album at number three on its list of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade.^[54]Pitchfork put the album at number four on the Top 200 Albums of the 2000s.^[55] The alternative music website also named "Poor Places" and "Jesus, Etc." as the 147th and 61st best songs of the decade, respectively.^[56]Paste named the album the second-best album of the decade.^[57] Some music outlets have rankedYankee Hotel Foxtrot as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2006, readers ofQ Magazine voted it the 100th "Greatest Album Ever".^[58] In 2012,Rolling Stone ranked it #493 on its list ofThe 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, saying, "Wilco's great leap forward was a mix of rock tradition, electronics, oddball rhythms and experimental gestures.",^[59] and in the 2020 reboot of the list, they elevated the album's position to #225.^[9]

Credits according to liner notes.^[19]

• The Lonesome Crowded West, a 1997 album byModest Mouse which also features two towers (The Westin Seattle) on the cover

• Kot, Greg (2004),Wilco: Learning How to Die (First ed.), New York: Broadway Books{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Levy, Joe (2005),The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (First ed.), New York: Wenner Books{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) Retrieved on 2007-01-02

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