Trivia / The Breeders

• Cut Song: "Go Man Go" was co-written by Kim Deal and Black Francis and originally was to be included on Last Splash - it was ultimately kept off due to confusion about the legal publishing rights and replaced with "Divine Hammer", only to finally see release as a single in 2023 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Last Splash.
• Enforced Method Acting: They couldn't get the right tremolo effect for Carrie Bradley's violin on "Mad Lucas" using effect pedals, so eventually she played her part while the Deal sisters held on to her and shook her.
• One-Hit Wonder: Quick, name a song of theirs that isn't "Cannonball". Thought so.
  • "Divine Hammer".
• Throw It In!:
  • Their cover of Sebadoh's "Freed Pig" originally wasn't meant to be recorded, and was something they'd learned as sort of an ironic joke. The Head To Toe EP was produced by J Mascis, and "Freed Pig" was written by Lou Barlow about his troubled relationship with Mascis while he was in Dinosaur Jr.., so the band thought it would be funny to use it to warm up in the studio. When Mascis walked in on them playing the song, he wasn't familiar with it, assumed it was an original, and was confused by the band's laughter when he said they should record it. Once the band explained, Mascis still liked the song, so he had it recorded anyway.
  • The iconic "false start" bass line in "Cannonball". In rehearsal, Josephine Wiggs played it flat twice in a row, and it sounded cool so they kept it.
• What Could Have Been: The earliest idea of the band was Kim and Tanya wanting to start a dance-music duo.
  • Apparently if Tanya Donnelly had stayed with the band after Pod, she would have gotten to write more songs for the next album. One telling has it that Tanya was promised more input on the next album, wrote a batch of potential Breeders songs, then grew impatient when Kim then had to go back to the Pixies for their next album and tour cycle; so she just started her own band, Belly.
• Working Title: An early version of "Cannonball" was titled "Grunggae", as in a portmanteau of "grunge" and "reggae" - the band thought the prominent bass line sounded like reggae, and the lyrics of the album version mention a "reggae song,". A rough demo was released under this title as a B-Side, with Kim even shouting "Grunggae!" at the start as a form of Studio Chatter.