"The Most Unwanted Song" is slightly under twenty-two minutes long. Lead singer Dina Emerson raps lyrics about the American frontier in an operatic voice. The narrator of the song is a cowboy who kills wild animals with a knife, lassos cows, and rides through the wilderness "wild and free". The cowboy rests by reading philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1921 work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and pondering his philosophy of language. After singing a verse about Wittgenstein in German, he returns home to make love to Miss Kitty, shoots a suspicious stranger, and fights "Injuns" in order to build a grocery store on their land that will sell American cheese. Emerson's verses are repeatedly interrupted by a children's choir that describes various holidays and urges listeners to call their relatives and shop at Walmart, and by several sections of dissonant free improvisation designated in the score as "slams". Towards the end of the song, Mankin shouts various political terms and slogans into a megaphone over harp-driven "elevator music", followed by a unison "folk song" refrain. According to Soldier, there were less than 200 people in the world who could be expected to like "The Most Unwanted Song" at the time of writing.

Reviewed on Feb 27, 2024


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