Misunderstood

Misunderstood was one of the first songs Tweedy wrote for Being There. It is a song about a tortured musical artist told from the point of view of a fan, and it carries several references to the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, including an insult Farrar had used against Tweedy, calling him a mama's boy. The fifth verse takes lyrics from Amphetamine by Peter Laughner, a Cleveland musician who died at 24 in 1977, and the credits note that the lines are used with permission.

To create chaos on the track, the members of Wilco recorded a section on which each switched to an unfamiliar instrument and placed pieces of it into the song. The track runs 6:28, longer than anything else on the first disc.