Man, look at those fresh-faced Johns in that music video. I reckon I was about 12 years old when I saw the clip for TMBG’s ‘Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head’ for the first time and thus heard the song too. Would have been 2007, and YouTube was up and running at this point. Not the big deal it is today. Was a lot more humble and much more innocent back then. At 12, the Giants had been around in my life for probably three and a bit years at that point. And it was hard to find music videos by them online without really having to look for some websites. Now all of them were on this “new” site, and ‘Puppet Head’ was a well-liked song according to the band’s wiki. Became an instant hit in my book and another to add to that list of tunes I already knew that really made TMBG stand out compared to any other band/musician/artist I usually listened to.

I distinctly remember stopping and starting the video numerous times, just to keep replaying the image of the two Johns jumping in time to the track’s opening drum pattern. It’s quite hypnotizing in its own way. Plus, it’s quite the visual to start things off with. Once I realised that this was the duo’s first ever music video, it made sense that the first scene had to lure viewers in somehow. In fact there are many dance moves here (which were a signature in those early TMBG videos) that I kept on rewatching. Just made the two guys all the more endearing. But you want to know about the song, that’s why you’re here. Well, John Linnell originally wrote it – lyrics and music – but was unhappy with how his verses turned out. He gave it to bandmate John Flansburgh who “filled in all the blanks”, resulting in one of the best TMBG outcomes, a collaboration between the two band members in comparison to the usual where one or the other will write the entire song.

From what I can gather from the lyrics, I think it’s simply about a person who doesn’t like their job, wants more out of life. Maybe a little loving to help soothe the pain. And all of this could happen if someone would only put their hand inside the titular puppet head. The talk about zombies and this puppet head puts things into a bit of a surreal area, but I think that’s just a way of making the understanding a little harder to achieve. Well, I think they did that quite successfully. But like a lot of other TMBG songs, it’s a bunch of fun to sing along to. The track was released as the second song on the band’s first album from 1986, but with a different mix from that in the music video. The snare hits are drenched in reverb, someone suggested to make the song a little sharper in its key, and the tone overall is a little brighter. It does fit in alongside the other 18 tracks on that record. When I sing it out of the blue, my pitch usually goes to that of the video’s. But honestly, this is one of those rare occasions where I like two separate released mixes of a song at about the same level.