Jed the Humanoid is a song on the 2000 album The Sophtware Slump released by the Modesto, California indie-rock band Grandaddy. The song is a eulogy for an android who drinks himself to death,[1] and is taken to be central to the nature versus technology parable of the band's second album.[2] A music reviewer for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey, called it "the saddest robot song ever written."[3]
Songwriter Jason Lytle explained that much like Modesto's famous former resident, George Lucas, growing up "he had nothing better to do than dream up robots."[1]
In the song, the inventors of the bona fide thinking, feeling robot lament leaving town and returning to find that Jed has raided the liquor cabinet and killed himself.[4]
"Jed is a mechanical martyr with a message," said Lytle. "And his message is that alcohol and electronics do not mix."[5]
The character of Jed also appears in two other songs by Grandaddy: Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) from the same album, and in the song Jeddy 3's Poem from the EP Signal to Snow Ratio.