If I had to pick one song as my favourite, this might be it. I'd ask for it to be played at my funeral, except I'm not sure I want a fancy funeral. Besides, this is over six minutes long, which is a lot to ask of anyone who doesn't already love this song.
Yo La Tengo were from Hoboken, New Jersey, and feature the husband and wife team of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley. They were formed in 1984 and have had 15 different bass players during that time, though James McNew has stabilized things, having been in the band since 1991.
"Yo la tengo" means "I have it" in Spanish; the band picked this name based on an anecdote about the 1962 New York Mets. I've seen this story in a couple of places, but here's what Wikipedia has written about it:
The name came from a baseball anecdote from the 1962 season told by Richie Ashburn, when New York Mets center fielder Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón collided in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would yell, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn, who before spoke only English, learned to yell, "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "Yo la tengo!" as a way to avoid outfield collisions.
(Thomas, nicknamed "The Big Donkey" when he was a player, always contended that the whole thing was made up.)
"Nowhere Near" comes from the band's sixth album, Painful, released in 1993. It contained more atmospheric and ambient sounds than their previous releases, which featured noise jams.
Yo La Tengo released their most recent album in 2023. They appear live on radio station WFMU's annual fundraising marathon every year - listeners who call in to pledge money to the station can request a song that the band will perform.
Created October 2, 2026.