Songfacts®:

• In the 2013 reissue of Benefit, Ian Anderson wrote in the liner notes: "This obviously is written as a double-meaning where I'm notionally talking about an imaginary girl in frankly a rather thin and embarrassing pun... I suppose what I was referring to was a view of rather affluent if not upper class society, and I suppose a bit of disdain that I might have felt for people who would display wealth and authority without having earned it. I mean, I'm a leftie at heart...
  
  Sossity as a song title and as a weak pun, it's not very good. As an instrumental piece of music it's quite nice... there are a couple of awkward harmonic jumps in it, but they make sense and they bring the song back round again. So it's kind of okay musically, it's quite an interesting idea, but lyrically I was never really comfortable with it. And it's mainly that one word, Sossity, an invented word that seemed like a rather prissy girl's name."