For "Being There", Tweedy wanted to blend the experiences he had making music with the ones he had listening to music. One of the first songs that Tweedy wrote was "Misunderstood", a song about a tortured musical artist from the point of view of a fan. The song contains several overt references to the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, including the addition of insults that Farrar used against Tweedy—specifically one calling him a "mama's boy". Part of the song's lyrics ("Take the guitar player for a ride/See, he ain't never been satisfied/He thinks he owes some kind of debt/Be years before he gets over it") are originally from Peter Laughner, an underground alternative rock artist from Cleveland that died at 24 in 1977, taken from his song "Amphetamine". The song concludes with the artist lashing out against the listener with satirical self-pity, a rebellion against the way that fans saw Uncle Tupelo as only an archetype of Gram Parsons inspired country rock. To induce a feeling of chaos on the track, the members of Wilco recorded a track where the members switched to novel instruments and placed sections of it into the song. The theme of a "tortured artist" is found in other songs as well; the end of "Sunken Treasure" features Tweedy calling for the renewal of his youth as a punk rocker.