Lariat

This song finds Malkmus singing of growing up "listening to the music of the best decade ever." He explained to Billboard magazine: "I was trying to write something that Taylor Swift would write, or maybe even more Katy Perry. I was thinking in wide ways. For me I'm a seventies guy, and sometimes when you're in your early adolescence or when the chicks are just a little older, and kind of out of your reach, they're the ones you sort of like at that young age. Seventies chicks and seventies rock."

Malkmus sings about the Grateful Dead in the song. He explained to Rolling Stone: "Back then, the Grateful Dead was a fratboy stand-in for alternative. If you were into the Dead, for a frat boy, that was like being into Faust or something. So the St. Elmo's rich guys at UVA would play it on the lawn and throw some Frisbees" "That song is just like a party at [Pavement percussionist] Bob Nastanovich's house where everyone is wigging out," he added. "It's about loving music, loving WTJU, loving the Butthole Surfers – bonding over that s--t. There's that pathetic rallying cry at the end, 'We grew up listening to the music of the best decade ever!' Which could be anyone's era of music."