Songfacts®:

• You think you've had to sit through some uncomfortable dinners in your day? In "Self Defense," Paul Westerberg sits through one so bad that he starts thinking about literally killing himself.
  
  "Self Defense" is a song of alienation, angst, and doubt-themes Westerberg has been exploring since his 1979 start with The Replacements. He was one of the first to do so in a serious and consistent fashion. In the process he became a trailblazer for '90s grunge and alternative music, even though those scenes were mostly ignoring him by the time he recorded "Self Defense" for Suicane Gratification, his third solo album.
  
  "Self Defense" is all fragile piano and ragged vocals - sounds of a broken man teetering on the edge. Westerberg sings about holding his true feelings inside while eating dinner with unnamed others. He wants to spill his dinner to escape the situation, yet he remains. "Self Defense" becomes a self-portrait of a man who made himself a legend with drunken debauchery and his combative attitude towards record executives, fans, and Tom Petty alike. Only in his later years did he drop some hints about the anxiety and self-doubt that had fueled those behaviors.
  
  His need to escape the dinner scene builds through "Self Defense" until we reach the finale, in which Westerberg reveals how deep his angst truly runs:
  
  And it's wrong to commit a suicide
  It's only in self-defense
• Westerberg has sung about suicide without actually using the word in songs such as "Crackle And Drag" and "Can't Hardly Wait."
• Don Was co-produced Suicane Gratification in 1999, the same year he worked on Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers' final album, Spirit of Music. Was was a Westerberg fan. He listened to 14 Songs, Westerberg's first solo album, as inspiration for Voodoo Lounge, the Rolling Stones' 22nd studio album.
• Lying through dinner
  And your rock and roll teeth again
  
  In Seeing Through Paul, a documentary covering Westerberg's creation of Suicane Gratification, Westerberg says his only regret was not getting his teeth fixed earlier in his career. "It's too late now," he says, "I've become accustomed to them."
• Then you wouldn't have to sit here
  On the fence
  
  To sit "on the fence" is to be indecisive or stuck between two sides of a problem.