From Noise Floor: Rarities 1998-2005 (2006)
I first heard this song on Letterman. There was a lot of buzz. Bright Eyes on Letterman! So we tuned in, and the band got up, and they played this song. And no one had ever heard it before. It was delightful, in many ways, to be party to that. It was a new song, and he was showcasing it live on national television. I went online and found a video of the performance, and then I found an mp3 of the audio from the performance. That was it, though. No one knew where the song came from, or where it would go. And all this begged the question: “When is he going to release it?” A Bright Eyes mystery, solved in 2005.
Notable lyric: so believe you’re who you are / and just stay in character / but at the end of the play the audience walks away / and you’ll be shivering cold on a well-lit stage.
Trust me, you’ll never be shivering cold on a well-lit stage. Those lights are super hot!!!