This disorientation anthem was written by Pixies lead singer Frank Black, who was inspired by a snorkeling adventure. Under water, sometimes the only way to know which way is up is by looking at the air bubbles. Black told Select (October 1997): "That came from me snorkeling in the Caribbean and having this very small fish trying to chase me. I don't know why - I don't know too much about fish behavior."
In a Songfacts
interview with Frank Black, he talked about "Where Is My Mind?" Said Black: "In terms of the content, you don't know where that's going to come. It's such a ricochet, 'pinball wizard' kind of thing - these things bouncing into each other: words, concepts, manic thinking. Half the songs I've written, I had no idea what I was talking about. Certainly, anything that appears into the abstract, I don't know."
This was used in the last scene of the 1999 mind-bending movie Fight Club, which helped introduce the Pixies to a new audience. Many other TV series and movies have used the song, often when a character is questioning his or her grip on reality. Movies to use it include:
Horns (2013)
Sucker Punch (2011) - Emily Browning version
Observe and Report (2009) - City Wolf version
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me (1992)
A Matter of Degrees (1990)
On the HBO series The Leftovers, the song is used as a motif when characters aren't sure what is real. Other TV series include:
The Tick ("Where's My Mind" - 2017)
Beyond ("The Hour of the Wolf" - 2017)
The Good Wife ("Battle of the Proxies" - 2012)
Mr. Robot ("eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt" - 2015) - Maxence Cyrin version
Cold Case ("True Calling" - 2008)
How I Met Your Mother ("Cupcake" - 2006)
Criminal Minds ("Sex, Birth, Death" - 2006)
Veronica Mars ("Driver Ed" - 2005)
Nada Surf covered this for the 1999 album
Where Is My Mind? A Tribute To The Pixies; The Toadies covered it on their 2004 album
Best Of Toadies: Live From Paradise.
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Suggestion credit:
Rachel - London, England
Producer Steve Albini used some unusual recording techniques on
Surfer Rosa as he was desperate to avoid "the studio sound." For instance he moved all the studio equipment to its bathroom in the hope of achieving a real rather than studio echo on bassist Kim Deal's backing vocals for this and her lead vocals on
Gigantic. Albini later admitted that the record could have been completed in a week were if not for the time wasted experimenting on projects like this.
Frank Black acknowledges he would never have completed the song without some words of encouragement from his then-girlfriend and future wife, Jean Walsh.
"I was strumming the guitar in the bedroom, and she stuck her head out and said, 'Finish that song, that's a good one,'" he recalled to ABC Audio. "So I was, like, 'Oh, OK.' And she had never said anything like that to me before, and hasn't ever since."
The Brooklyn-based independent publisher Akashic Books brought the song to life as a whimsical adventure story in a
24-page picture book. It tells the story of a young girl who loses her mind when she falls off a skateboard, then travels to magical lands in search of it.
The singer Tkay Maidza covered "Where Is My Mind?" in 2021. Her rendition was used in a
2023 commercial for Apple's AirPods Pro that shows a listener shutting out the outside world with their noise canceling.
If you're a fan of the Pixies and you use a Google phone, you might want to avoid listening to "Where Is My Mind" before bed. The song's opening line, "Stop!" triggers a feature on some Google phones that allows users to turn off their alarms by saying "stop." As a result, people are waking up to find that their alarms have been turned off, and they're not happy about it.
The Pixies have apologized for the inconvenience, saying they didn't know about the feature when they wrote the song. They've also said that they hope fans can forgive them.
