The Sound of Muzak

Wilson called it very much a critique of the music business the band worked in. The Daily Vault counts it as the third of his songs on that subject, after Piano Lessons on Stupid Dream and Four Chords That Made a Million on Lightbulb Sun. Wilson first programmed the beat on a drum machine, and Harrison then added hi-hat changes and ghost notes. The German drum magazine Bonedo describes the groove as seven sixteenth notes grouped three, two and two, with an even quarter-note hi-hat laid across it. Aviv Geffen of Blackfield and John Wesley sing backing vocals.

Lava sent a promo CD to American radio with a 3:32 edit, and Wilson's 5:32 home demo appeared on the 2020 deluxe edition of In Absentia. Gavin Harrison reworked it for big band, paired with So Called Friend and arranged by Laurence Cottle, on his 2015 album Cheating the Polygraph, and Melanie Mau and Martin Schnella folded it into an acoustic medley in 2023.

Live

First played on 22 July 2002 to about thirty people in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it became the band's fourth most played song, logged 346 times up to its last outing at Musik im Park in Schwetzingen on 5 August 2023. Wilson has played it another 191 times in his solo shows. Official live versions appear on Arriving Somewhere..., Rockpalast, Atlanta and Closure/Continuation.Live. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.