Songfacts®:

• In a Songfacts interview with Urge Overkill, Nash Kato, who sings lead on this track, explained the meaning: "Years of touring these cities and towns on a nightly basis, it's not every port, but you would have a girl that you would look up. And after years of touring, those girls would just sort of disappear. Where you remember them living they no longer live. One day they're not there anymore and you don't have a number, you don't know where they went or what became of them.
  
  The image of the totem pole is a reminder of some sort of milestone or landmark that you could remember where they live. We were always trying to meet by the totem pole."
• Urge Overkill released a lot of material from 1989-1995, but then they broke up and didn't make another album until 2011. "Totem Pole" is part of their album Oui, released 11 years later in 2022.