Big Black's songs explored the dark side of American culture in unforgiving detail, acknowledging no taboos. Albini's lyrics openly dealt with such topics as mutilation, murder, rape, child abuse, arson, immolation, racism, and misogyny. "That's just what was interesting to me as a postcollegiate bohemian", he later remarked. "We didn't have a manifesto. Nothing was off-limits; it's just that that's what came up most of the time." Many of his songs told miniature short stories of sociopaths doing evil things that the average person might merely contemplate. Some, such as "Cables", "Pigeon Kill", and "Jordan, Minnesota", were based on real events, or things that Albini had witnessed during his midwest upbringing. He compared the stories to "Ripley's Believe It or Not!", saying that "If you stumble across something like this, you think 'This can't be!' But it turns out to be true, and that makes it even wilder."