Here Comes Your Man

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"Here Comes Your Man"

Single by Pixies
from the album Doolittle
Released	19 June 1989
Format	Vinyl record (7"), CD
Recorded	October/November 1988
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	3:21
Label	4AD/Elektra
Producer(s)	Gil Norton
Chart positions
#56 (UK) #3 (US Modern Rock Tracks)
Pixies singles chronology
"Monkey Gone to Heaven" (1989)	"Here Comes Your Man" (1989)	"Velouria" (1990)
Doolittle track listing
"I Bleed" (4)	"Here Comes Your Man" (5)	"Dead" (6)

"Here Comes Your Man" is a song by the American alternative rock band Pixies, and is the fifth track on their 1989 album Doolittle. "Here Comes Your Man" was written and sung by the band's frontman Black Francis, and produced by Gil Norton. The song was released as a single in June 1989 in the United Kingdom and the United States, and reached number 3 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Written by Francis as a teenager, "Here Comes Your Man" was recorded for the band's 1987 demo tape, but not included on either Come on Pilgrim or Surfer Rosa; it was seen as an anomaly in the band's repertoire by their producers. Critics saw "Here Comes Your Man" as the Pixies' breakthrough song, with comparisons later being drawn in that regard with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; Jon Dolan of Spin magazine commented that it was "the most accessible song ever by an underground-type band".^[1]

1 Background
2 Lyrics and meaning
3 Critical reaction
4 Video and imagery
5 Single
6 Sample
7 Notes and references
8 External links

[edit] Background

From the very beginning, the band members and their early producers (Gary Smith on Come on Pilgrim and Steve Albini on Surfer Rosa) saw "Here Comes Your Man" as "pop" material. The song, originally recorded for the Purple Tape (an acoustic version of the song), was not included on either Come on Pilgrim or Surfer Rosa. For a post-Surfer Rosa single, the band's label, 4AD, rejected another recording of the song; they later chose "Gigantic" and "River Euphrates" as a B-side.^[2]

[edit] Lyrics and meaning

In an interview with NME, Francis commented on the meaning of the song:^[3]

“

It's about winos and hobos traveling on the trains, who die in the California Earthquake. Before earthquakes, everything gets very calm—animals stop talking and birds stop chirping and there's no wind. It's very ominous.

I've been through a few earthquakes, actually, 'cause I grew up in California. I was only in one big one, in 1971. I was very young and I slept through it. I've been awake through lots of small ones at school and at home. It's very exciting actually—a very comical thing. It's like the earth is shaking, and what can you do? Nothing.

”

[edit] Critical reaction

[edit] Video and imagery

A scene from the "Here Comes Your Man" video; Kim Deal (right) is currently "singing".

A music video, filmed by local students, to promote the single shows the band playing their instruments through a distorted fish-eye lens, the camera variously panning horizontally across the performance space and vertically over the individual band members. Keeping in the spirit of the mimed performance, Francis and Deal open and shut their mouths in time with their prerecorded vocals, yet make no attempt to articulate their lips in synch with the words that they are supposed to be singing. Instead, they simply keep their mouths wide open with blank expressions for the duration of each verse.^[4]

[edit] Single

The following tracks appeared on the single:^[5]

Here Comes Your Man (Francis) - 3:00
Wave of Mutilation [UK Surf] (Francis) - 3:00
Into the White - (Francis/Deal) - 4:42
Bailey's Walk - (Francis) - 2:23

[edit] Sample

"Here Comes Your Man" (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- This sample contains the end of the first verse and the chorus.
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.