A lot of times when I’ve posted about They Might Be Giants, I state which out of the two Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell) wrote the track I’m discussing at that particular moment. “Oh, this was written by Linnell”, “Flansburgh wrote this one”, etcetera, etcetera. Well, ‘My Evil Twin’ – the fourth track on the band’s fourth album – stands out from many other songs of They as an actual sort of collaboration between the two. John Linnell came up with a bunch of music, made it all MIDI, and then gave the disc to John Flansburgh who provided the melody and lyrics on top. The result was a peppy, quite hard-rocking number about the misadventures with an ‘evil twin’ who may or may not exist.

This track’s a confusing one. Who is the evil twin that Flansburgh sings about? The lyrics describe the good times that he and this twin have, playing hangman until the early hours of the morning, vandalizing their neighbour’s property. Just a couple of examples. Then they sleep through the day and carry on their mischief in the evenings. This closeness between the two scares Flansburgh because it almost seems like they’re one person, but then at the end it’s revealed he’s never actually met the twin. Maybe it’s an imaginary friend, and it isn’t meant to be that difficult to figure out. I listened to a podcast the other day that suggested that the track is possibly about John Linnell in a secretive, puzzling way. Linnell does harmonise throughout, and then he takes the lead vocal for a short moment on the ‘My Twin’ bridge… maybe Linnell is the twin and he’s been existing all along. It’s all a bit up in the air.

Produced at a time when the duo were possibly thinking of ditching their synthetic rhythm section and getting a proper backing band to play with them live, the track sounds like it’s performed by an a four-piece band even though that’s not the case. The drums sound like an actual drum kit. The bass sounds like a proper bass guitar. But then you listen to some off the rhythms those drums pull off and realise it would be incredibly difficult for a real person to replicate. If they did, they would need a lot of stamina. But I would say it’s that combination of the real-sounding rhythm section with the TMBG approach that makes the song stand out just a bit. Same goes for many other songs from that album. Though that’s for another time.