On 26th February 2013, I wrote a blog about They Might Be Giants’ song ‘Absolutely Bill’s Mood’. A busy little number, that one. That post was the third one I ever wrote on here. Coincidentally, that was the day that the band’s album Nanobots was made available to stream in its entirety on Rolling Stone, a week before its official release on 5th March (or 4th if you were in the UK like me). You can see me going crazy about it all on that same post. As the big TMBG fan I was at 17, I was excited for sure. As the big 30-year-old TMBG fan I am now, Nanobots is one of the group’s that I don’t return to all that much. It’s not bad. It’s not boring. I’ve always thought the majority of it was okay, with a few jewels shining in the tracklist. And ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ was one of those jewels that I think I liked immediately when I heard it on that available stream all those years ago.

A coup d’état is ‘an unexpected or sudden measure of state often involving force or threat of force’, as defined by Merriam-Webster. It’s a term usually associated with the overthrowing of a government by some organization. Though a government isn’t described or depicted in the lyrics of ‘Stone Cold…’, there’s definitely a lot of overthrowing going on. In the track, John Linnell sings of instances where the natural order is flipped, and what we would consider to be the servants in the hierarchy are now in charge. The stars have banded together to take out the sun and the moon. The worker bees have jumped the queen and taken over. An orchestra conductor is killed off, and a single viola takes their place. All greatly exaggerated scenes. Things get real though, when Linnell implies that a son and daughter murder their parents during a pleasant family dinner. Nevertheless, all of these actions are celebrated with a harmonised “Oh, yeah!” Linnell remarks they have “a certain je ne sais quoi”. He asks what the certain je ne sais quoi is. To which the answer is the song’s title. A tasteful use of the French language, I must say.

John Linnell has usually had a knack for writing strong power pop songs. The first one I can think of where it started would probably be ‘Experimental Film’? Though anyone can disagree. But the 2010s seemed to mark the time where he seemed to write one great power pop song after another. Kinda lacking the weirdness and eccentricity that would be found in the band’s earlier work, which some may feel “sad” about. But still enriched in the melody and memorability that makes the great in the first place. ‘Stone Cold…’ is one of ’em. A notable feature about the track is the accompaniment of John Flansburgh’s wife Robin Goldwasser on vocals. She provides the second harmonised ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ in the chorus after Linnell sings it first, and then Flansburgh follows after with the higher harmony. I like how he stays on that note after the other two stop singing at the end too. Really belting it out. This is a big high from Nanobots in my view, so I reckon it stands it ground as being the last representative from the album that I write about on here.