Uncle Tupelo - Wait Up

Jeff Tweedy - "Wait Up" (outtake from I am Trying to Break Your Heart) Tweedy wrote "Wait Up" for the Uncle Tupelo album March 16-20, 1992, years before his Wilco heyday, but his songwriting talent was already fully formed. "Wait Up" is a touching ballad where the singer promises his lover that he'll stay up all night until she returns. "I miss you," Tweedy says, "more than I need sleep." The arrangement on the song is beautiful. The moment when the fast-paced bluegrass fingerpicking gives way to that beautifully strummed instrumental break is legendary. It's the cathartic moment where the singer is able to overcome the tension of waiting and visualize the moment where he reunites with the one he loves.

Why, then, does the crowd break out into laughter during the song's most emotional moment?

The genius of "Wait Up" is the way it subverts your expectations. The aforementioned instrumental break considerably slows down the song's tempo, bringing the gallop of the verses to near complete stop. We are conditioned, when we hear a tempo and mood change this drastic, to expect the moment to last, to provide a musical counterpoint to the verses. However, this beautiful section only lasts about two measures (about six measures shorter than a bridge in classic pop song structure) before switching back to the sprint of the main song. Comedy is, above all, the subversion of expectations. In "Wait Up," Tweedy subverts expectations that most of the audience in this clip probably did not even realize they had.