“Independence Day” by Elliott Smith

"Independence Day" is on XO, the fourth studio album from Elliott Smith and his first solo record for a major label, which DreamWorks put out in August 1998. Smith composed it, and he recorded and mixed it with Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock, the producers he had traveled to Los Angeles to work with once the album got going in earnest in early 1998; Rothrock also played the drum machine.

The record's road began at Larry Crane's Jackpot Recording Studio after Either/Or came out in 1997, where the first demos for several of its songs took shape, and for a while it carried the working title Grand Mal. The big label wasn't entirely new to him, either: his band Heatmiser had released their final album, Mic City Sons, on one in 1996.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.