The Hardest Button to Button

Jack said the song is about a child trying to find his place in a dysfunctional family when a new baby comes. The phrase came from his father, and Jack describes it as a metaphor for the odd man out of a family. Like Seven Nation Army it uses a semi-acoustic guitar run through the Whammy pedal to stand in for a bass, and it did not use all eight tracks of the recorder. It was serviced to US alternative radio on 11 August 2003 and issued commercially in the UK on 17 November 2003 with St. Ides of March on the B-side. It reached 23 on the UK Singles Chart and 8 on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart. The single cover alludes to the graphics of Saul Bass, as in the poster for The Man with the Golden Arm, and to Jack's broken index finger.

Michel Gondry directed the video, which uses pixilation so that duplicates of the drums and amplifiers appear with every beat. Gondry used 32 identical Ludwig drum kits, 32 identical amplifiers and 16 identical microphone stands, and filmed around Manhattan over two days. Beck makes a cameo as a man in a white suit, and Jack wears a cast on his hand. Jack considers it their greatest video. It earned four nominations at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards, and The Simpsons parodied it in the episode Jazzy and the Pussycats. In 2006 an orchestral version was played to the band as a surprise in Cincinnati Music Hall, together with Aluminium and Blue Orchid. The arrangements were made for Wayne McGregor's Chroma, which premiered at the Royal Opera House on 16 November 2006 and won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.

Live

Of the 498 logged setlists that list songs, 211 include it. The earliest is from 7 April 2003 and the latest from 29 July 2007.