| "Nude as the News" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Cat Power | ||||
| from the album What Would the Community Think | ||||
| B-side | "Schizophrenia's Weighted Me Down" | |||
| Released | December 12, 1996 | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, punk blues, southern gothic | |||
| Label | Matador Records OLE-240 (Europe only) OLE-202 (Europe only) | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Chan Marshall | |||
| Cat Power singles chronology | ||||
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"Nude as the News" is a song by the American singer/songwriter Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall). It is the fourth song on her 1996 album, What Would the Community Think. It was released as a single, and a music video shot entirely in black and white and directed by Brett Vapnek.
A review in Vulture called the song both eerie and propulsive, saying that "it rolls like a long snarl."[1] The song is autobiographical, telling the story of an abortion that Marshall had when she was twenty. The chorus lyric, "Jackson, Jesse, I've got a son in me", does not refer to the Reverend Jesse Jackson but rather the first names of the children of Patti Smith, one of Marshall's heroes.[2]
The B-side "Schizophrenia's Weighted Me Down" is a composite of the two songs "Schizophrenia" by Sonic Youth and "Weighted Down (The Prison Song)" by Skip Spence.