Stuck Between Stations

"Stuck Between Stations" opens the album at 4:10, written by Finn, Kubler and Nicolay, and was its second single, on campus radio playlists from November 2006. The album title comes from a lyric in it, and the lyric refers to Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It recounts the life of the poet John Berryman, who taught at the University of Minnesota. Finn told Orlando Weekly in 2006 that he read an article about Berryman and thought he sounds like a Hold Steady song. He told Indy Week in 2008 that the song explores depression and art,.

Pitchfork ranked it 12th among the top songs of 2006 and 63rd of the 2000s, and The Current's poll of the most essential songs of the century put it 84th as of 2019. Stereogum called it the highest-soaring lowlife anthem in the Hold Steady's songbook, and Medialoper's Certain Songs series, number 598, found its Berryman verse funny and poignant at the same time. A live version, 4:00, is track two on A Positive Rage, from Halloween 2007 at the Metro in Chicago. They played it second in the main set at Brooklyn Bowl in Philadelphia on February 4, 2023, when the band said the room seemed to explode. The 2011 film Stuck Between Stations, directed by Brady Kiernan, took its title from it. We found no covers, samples or verified video details, and cannot say whether our upload is the album or a live version.