Songfacts®:

• In an interview with The Future Heart, Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne shed some light on this cryptic track about white trash rednecks and earthworms. He said: "The lyric is all stream of consciousness emotional syllables and f--ked up junk-sta position of words and mood to create (accidentally) the mysterious, epic meaning or meaninglessness of the song. And maybe that's why it works. The lyric 'I tried to tell you but I don't know how!!' is really what the main power and dilemma of the song is, which is often how we communicate with each other in real life situations all the time and in real life we struggle to find the right words to say some 'all encompassing perfectly meaningful statement' and, on an emotional level it does communicate and then we f--k it up with words. Ha."
• At first, Wayne had trouble coming up with lyrics beyond the simple chorus. "When it breaks into the chorus, that's just a simple, emotional thing. But in the beginning, I did struggle with what do I sing previous to that?" he told Diffuser. "I had read a couple of absurd little passages online about something and I just thought, 'I'm gonna go out there and sing these f---in' bizarre words against what we've set up, what you might be expecting.' And to do those opening lines, 'White trash rednecks, earthworms eat the ground,' everyone's going, 'Wait, what are you saying?' Which is exactly what I thought, you know, that's what we want. So that's already got everything you want about the mood."
  
  He continued: "Sometimes I think about it like when you go to eat. It's like I've got all the flavors, everything is fresh and what is there left to do? It's like, 'Well then I'll make the table a different color.' And you'll be like, 'What a great experience.' And you'll remember I had potatoes and steak, but the table was like, f---ing, green, and it blew your mind. It's just these little details that let it be."
• This is one of many Flaming Lips tunes that strategically uses curse words, which are a necessity for Coyne. He told Consequence Of Sound: "I've got to throw in some cuss word or my brain just doesn't come alive. I don't know what it is. I have to say motherf--ker to feel safe. Even in the beginning of 'How??' when I say, 'Kill your rock and roll, motherf--king hip-hop sounds,' I just came alive. It suddenly had a different texture about it, even though I don't know what it's supposed to be saying. But it felt different, which is what we're in this for."