Here is another celebration. This time by They Might Be Giants, for about the fourth time already in the ‘C’ series. The fun never ends.
“Celebration” is a Flansburgh penned ‘They’ song, and is an observational commentary of a night out in a club but filled with imagery and vocabulary use that only the two Johns could ever think of. That’s about all there is to it, really. I make it sound very tame, but the disco beat of that chorus, Flansburgh’s vocal manipulation and the catchy ‘oh-oh-ohs’ are only a few of things that make the tune one of the most enjoyable from “Join Us”.
Listen out for a Phil Collins drum fill that occurs near the end.
“Canajoharie” was one of the first songs from “Join Us” to be performed live by the band. The first time being in September 2010, months before the album was actually released.
This performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington was the first time I’d ever heard the song. Not because I was there, but because it was the first option that came up when I searched “They Might Be Giants – Canajoharie” on YouTube. Thinking about it now, I remember not being to overwhelmed by it. The verses were carried along by a steady boom-boom-clap back-beat and Linnell started blaring out the song title in the chorus. But back then, the lyrics had still not been deciphered yet. So I didn’t know what else to make of the song.
That all changed when the album actually came out in 2011. I was on holiday in the US after finishing my GCSEs, and listened to the album in full. There was just something about the studio version of “Canajoharie” that made me like it a lot more. Now I could understand what Linnell was singing about, and everything just sounded a lot tighter. “Canajoharie” is a real place too, which surprised me a bit. The band have a tendency to sing about weird things so I just thought it would be a made up word. It’s not.
It was my sixteenth birthday when the details of They Might Be Giants’ forthcoming fifteenth album “Join Us” were released to the public on Pitchfork. I was so excited. A new They Might Be Giants album? What could be better? Only a link to the brand new single!
Yes, “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” was probably the first song in full that They Might Be Giants fans heard from “Join Us”. The band had been releasing ‘teaser’ videos of workinthestudio, but this was the the moment that they had all been waiting for in 2011.
Although it did take a few listens for me to get into the swing of things, “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” was an appropriate choice of song for people to hear. Some may have been worried how the band would sound after they had released children’s albums in 2008 and 2009 with “The Else” being their last ‘adult’ album in 2007. This song proved that there was no need to be worried at all.
I did assume that it was autobiographical, probably just because it has the name “Johnny” in the title. As in “Johnny” Linnell or “Johnny” Flansburgh. But that was until they said that it was from the point of view of an ‘asshole’. Those are Linnell’s words, not mine.
The band then commenced the biggest fan contest to have ever existed. That was to create their own video for the song, and whoever won it received a cash prize. The winner was the entry above.
The Music in My Ears 