Naked as We Came

The second track on Our Endless Numbered Days, recorded with Brian Deck at Engine Studios in Chicago in the summer of 2003. Critics singled out Sarah Beam's harmony: NME heard her voice lift what it called a lover's lament, and NPR described the song as a tear-jerker about devotion and fragility, permanence and death. Beam said in 2019 that he had played it more than anything else on the album, and compared it to a dream you keep forgetting that he still felt blessed to have. Stereogum suggested it is now so familiar that it is hard to hear on its own terms.

It was used in the film In Good Company, in The L Word and Grey's Anatomy, and in the documentary Tarnation. A demo came out on the 2019 deluxe edition of the album.

Live

setlist.fm logs it at 182 Iron & Wine shows, fifth among all his songs, and more with Calexico. NPR's Tiny Desk set in 2011 closed with it, already his usual way to end a show. Live versions appear on the Live Session EP (2006), Norfolk 6/20/05, Morning Becomes Eclectic, Live at Third Man Records and the Who Can See Forever soundtrack, and Beam has played it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an orchestral arrangement. Cloud Nothings roughed it up for the A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video, set to the album version.