Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on religion, music — and the Dolly Parton song he dislikes

I've lived with a lot of musical insecurity in my life. I like a song I can sing along to. I like a traditional song structure where we move through a couple of verses but all the while we're building towards the bridge. And it's gonna be so great when we get there because that's the emotional center of the song and there will probably be some power chords that I can belt out and maybe the lyrics are dark and countercultural — but maybe they're not.

Maybe they're about the most universal of experiences: love and heartbreak and loneliness. And maybe all that feels not specific enough to be interesting, but I don't care. Because the way the notes all happened to line up makes me feel more alive than I was before the music came on.

I went to college in Tacoma, Wash., in the 1990s. When I showed up for my freshman year I had my CD collection in tow, which was heavy on the top 40 pop hits of the time. Janet (Miss Jackson, if you're nasty). En Vogue. Depeche Mode.

But the cool kids down the hall — and seemingly everywhere else on campus — were smoking pot and listening to Dylan and handing around Grateful Dead bootleg tapes. Then everyone got all excited about some band out of Seattle