Swingin Party

"Swingin Party" is about wild parties, lampshades-on-heads and all, but there's more going on beneath the surface. The Replacements were notorious for heavy drinking and drugging. Their habits were so egregious that even grizzled recording executives didn't like dealing with the band. Fans romanticized the partying as they are wont to do, but this excess was more human than it was heroic. The band drank to quell their performance anxiety. The group started very young (at only 12-years-old in the case of bassist Tommy Stinson) and kept a busy schedule for over a decade, but going on stage was still frightening for them. That fear is manifest in the lyrics: If being afraid is a crime We hang side by side At the swingin' party down the line

Lorde covered the song in 2013, including it on the US iTunes Store edition of The Love Club EP and on the B-side to the "Tennis Court" single. On June 17, 2013, the song climbed to #10 on the New Zealand Singles Chart. She then included it on the extended version of her debut studio album, Pure Heroine. Other covers include: Popland on their 2000 tribute album, Left of the Dial: A Pop Tribute to The Replacements. Annie Hayden covered the song in 2005 on The Enemy of Love. Also in 2005, The Weakerthans performed the song at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Kindness did a house-music interpretation in 2009 and released it as their first single. Their version was used in the 2015 film Paper Towns.

Paul Westerberg got the kernel for the song while listening to a bootleg version of "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong" by Buffalo Springfield.