Written by Black Francis as a teenager, "Here Comes Your Man" was recorded for the band's 1987 demo tape, but not included on either Come On Pilgrim or Surfer Rosa, as the songwriter was reluctant to release the song.

[7] Years later after the Pixies were formed, producer Paul Kolderie noted the group did not want to record "Here Comes Your Man" for its demo "The Purple Tape".

"[1] When 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell handpicked the track listing for the group's debut release Come on Pilgrim, he intentionally left out "Here Comes Your Man".

[9] For a post-Surfer Rosa single, 4AD rejected another recording of the song; they later chose "Gigantic", with "River Euphrates" on the B-side.

[10] Francis reflected in 2004 that, during the recording of the group's second album Doolittle, he felt embarrassed by "Here Comes Your Man", but since producer Gil Norton really liked the song, the songwriter "threw him a bone".

[13] In an interview with NME, Francis commented on the meaning of the song:[14] It's about winos and hobos traveling on the trains, who die in the California Earthquake, peeing their pants.

"[15] A music video to promote the single, co-directed by Neil Pollock and Jonathan Bekemeier, shows the band playing its instruments through a distorted fish-eye lens, the camera variously panning horizontally across the performance space and vertically over the individual band members.

Keeping in the spirit of the mimed performance, Francis and bassist Kim Deal open and shut their mouths in time with their prerecorded vocals, yet make no attempt to articulate their lips in sync with the words that they are supposed to be singing.

"[13] Ivo Watts-Russell stated if Black Francis had been possibly persuaded to release the version of the song recorded during the session for the "Gigantic" single—which he described as "totally streamlined and ready for radio"—that "maybe if a major label company was able to convince people to take a more commercial route, maybe Pixies would have sold a whole bunch more records than they did.

'"[13] The song makes an appearance in the 2009 romantic comedy film (500) Days of Summer, where it is sung by the main character Tom Hansen in a karaoke bar.

Other appearances include the films Say It Isn't So (2001), Stuck on You (2003), Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005), and Daddy's Home (2015).