Paraguay

Album: Post Pop Depression (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Iggy Pop concludes his Pop Pop Depression album with this bluesy duet with producer Josh Homme. Fed up with "whippin' fools and keepin' score," Iggy sings of retiring to South America where he plans to see out the rest of his days in peace. Homme told Mojo: "When he played that, the lyrics killed me. 'I just couldn't take no more. Of whipping fools and keeping score'. The fact that the record ends with this song, where he's going out to the jungle like Colonel Kurtz, seemed very fitting."
  • The song ends with a spoken-word, expletive-laden rant by Pop. Homme said: "I had this other part, like a slave chant, and all of a sudden he starts talking over it. We only played it five times, and he had five different rants, a very earnest go-f--k yourself. Improvised. I was like, 'Did you just tell whoever was listening to go and f--k off?!'"

    "We actually debated if that's what we should do. Then I just said, 'Yeah – it's not like it's from somebody that doesn't matter.'"
  • In American Valhalla, a documentary about the making of Post Pop Depression, Pop's rant at the end of "Paraguay" was so vitriolic that Homme was slightly unsettled.

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