Tweedy: Well, there's always an "I" and a "you" in every song, whether or not there are any "I"s and "you"s in the lyrics.

Tweedy: Whatever makes them happy. [Laughs] It doesn't really matter to me. People have attributed a lot of "I"s to me that are so far from me. I have no say in that. It's fine. I don't think there's anything on any record that I've made where the "I" is exactly me, you know? At the same time, I don't think there's ever been anything that I've sung that I haven't been able to feel connected to in some way.

Playboy.com: People rarely confuse actors with the characters they play, but the intimacy of the medium encourages people to connect songwriters to their songs.

Tweedy: People seem to have a really tough time with that. I don't know what it is. Our culture is so obsessed with notions of celebrity. An outrageously disproportionate amount of interest gets paid to biographical information about musicians, and people making art, and very little of the discussion involves the artwork itself. Which I find to be somewhat - I don't know if I'm disturbed by it, or if it's just an observation, but it can be a little jarring to get used to.

Playboy.com: Sky Blue Sky is some of the most upbeat music you've made in a while, but sometimes even making upbeat music can be controversial.

Tweedy: I'm finding out that it's as controversial if not more controversial than putting 10 minutes of noise after a record!

Playboy.com: What accounts for that disconnect?

Tweedy: I could speculate all day long why it's that way. I like doing that, thinking about those things. I don't know that I would ever have any insight, and if I did I don't know that it would do me any good. It's just the way the world is. I think that comic actors and people that write in a simple and straightforward style, like Kurt Vonnegut, have known for years that that's something that will almost always be dismissed more easily than something that is hard for someone to understand. A really great comedic performance is never going to win an Oscar, or rarely get acknowledged for what it is, even if it's every bit as hard or involved or physically demanding as a Shakespearean role. Though I'm not trying to place what we've been doing in some sense as some high comedic art or anything. [Laughs] I think the simplest explanation is that people are a lot more insecure dismissing something that they don't understand. If you understand something, I think it's a lot easier to say that you don't like it, and know that people aren't going to think you're a fool. I think the most impenetrable works of art have always been held up and propped up with the most ridiculous amount of universal acclaim. Finnegan's Wake would be a great point of contention for a lot of people.

Playboy.com: And far more people have talked about Ulysses than actually read it.

Tweedy: Exactly. And I'm someone who has really, really aspired to read a lot of literature, and enjoy a lot of that stuff. I can honestly say I enjoyed Finnegan's Wake on a lot of levels, but I can never, never lie and with a straight face say that I understood it.

Playboy.com: After Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a lot of the new fans who came on board have been almost provincial or possessive, like you'd come over to "their" side.

Tweedy: Oh, I don't know if they could be more provincial than the people that were claiming ownership to begin with, but certainly as provincial. That's the thing that people would probably find shocking. The community that prides itself on exploration and inclusiveness in terms of all types of world music or whatever, this universal experimental avant-garde community, is extremely, extremely possessive and narrowing.