(The) Harvey Danger Database

SCN: [“Flagpole Sitta”] was more like an absurdist parody, a huge piss-take, a huge fuck-you, and it became so successful, and was taken literally by so many people. People didn’t get the joke. I had people come up to me at shows and say, Hey, I got my tongue pierced because of you, because of that line in the song. That, of course, was never my intention.

— CMJ New Music Monthly, December 2000

SCN: The title of “Flagpole Sitta” was a malformed attempt at referencing Pavement and NWA in one fell swoop—if we’d only called it “I’m Not Sick (But I’m Not Well)” we’d all be billionaires!; line one references “Scotty’s Lament” by my high school heroes The Connells (we opened for them in 1996 at the Backstage, they were unmoved by this tribute); “fingertips” line is about someone specific; chorus lyric (made up in studio) unconsciously references “Amplitude” by college heroes Guv’ner, cf. I’m not healthy, I’m not ill (singer, an acquaintance, shamed me for it in front of Brownie’s in NYC, later phoned to apologize at behest of his wife/bandmate, who said it’s not that original, anyway); there are seven unpublished verses to this song, most in the spirit (if not the league) of Cole Porter’s “dirty” verses to “You’re the Top.”^10A

AMH: I think it took us nine nerve-wracking takes, punctuated by smoke breaks and walks around the block, to get this one right. In retrospect, I guess it was worth it.^10A

JJL: I have to admit I never “got” this song. I just wanted to write a song with a bouncy rhythm like “Viewmaster” by the band Erie’s Trip. The signature drum roll at the start was a last-minute idea we came up with right before we were to record it. We only ever meant that recording to be a demo, but fate had different plans…^10A

ECS: I know, it’s so uncool for me as co-writer to say, but screw it: I think “Flagpole Sitta” is an absolutely pitch-perfect artifact of the time and place in which it was written. Contradictory, guarded, intimate, sneering, cheering, feeding back, bouncing forward: I think people heard it and understood its realness instantly and intuitively. The fact that it was never meant to be an anthem for anyone only makes it better.^10A

SCN: Chorus (I’m not sick, but I’m not well, etc.) was more or less written at the microphone during recording. Prior to that it was all “bop bop ba"s. I didn’t realize I was unconsciously referencing "Amplitude” by the great NYC band Guv’ner (though they later told me so). Nor did I realize I was rhyming “well” with “well” later on. No harm, no foul. Author cited: Aldous Huxley (To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme / to suffer hell or soar angelic just take a pinch of psychedelic.)^P&F

ECS: [“Flagpole Sitta”] manages to snag some sort of zeitgeist experience. I think it’s a really true version of what it felt like to be alive, at least in Seattle [when] we actually wrote it. The ironic remove and the innate suspicion of both the mainstream culture and the alternative culture, and the yearning to be part of something, but not being able to get around the suspicion and the self-loathing. And then the “bah-bahs” are just also the joy of being alive. It resonates with a frame of mind that turns out to be more universal than I would’ve thought. It’s both really upbeat and kind of savage and snarky at the same time.

— A.V. Club, November 2015

SCN: We took everything we did seriously—maybe too seriously—but there was no way in our mind as a band that “Flagpole Sitta” was better or more important than any of the other songs on that record, or any of the songs on subsequent records. They’re all equally meaningful to us. If you look at songs like kids, that’s the kid that got a full scholarship to Harvard, while the other kids are struggling to read. [Laughs.] Somehow, we accidentally lucked into writing and recording this incredibly catchy, commercial thing and it leapt off our record and got into the mainstream. Nothing else we did was a candidate for that kind of treatment. It doesn’t mean the other songs we did weren’t meaningful to us. A hit single is a different thing than a good song.^ALT

SCN: (Confidential to the cover bands of the world: the reason you can’t get the song to sound right is because you’re not playing the leads on a bass.)^MMV