Song of the Day 8/20: Old 97’s, “Buick City Complex”

I drove the other day past the Boxwood Road plant, still under demolition, and didn’t realize I should have rolled up the windows. Most of the buildings are now piles of rubble, but the administration building was still half-standing.

Nobody has written a song about Boxwood yet, the way Rhett Miller did for the Buick City complex in Flint, Mich., on the band’s 2001 “Satellite Rides.” The complex closed in 1999, but it consisted of 28 separate buildings, and many were still standing when the song, told from the POV of a soon-to-be-unemployed auto worker, was released. It was considered as a single, but the record company thought the title would confuse people, which means it confused the record company execs.