Probably not the most popular TMBG song, but it just has something that attracts me to it. I honestly can’t say much about it – it’s only 1 minute and a few seconds long. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s more of a transitional thing that sets you up for the next track.
It’s very easy to memorise, the Johnny Cash sample fits in very well (however oddly placed it may sound). It sends off a very mysterious vibe. What is the ‘boat of car’? Why is the narrator following the ‘traces of the fingernails’?
Who am I kidding, it’s nothing to get philosophical about. It probably doesn’t mean anything at all.
Vocals are done by John Flansburgh’s old girlfriend by the way.
“Birds Fly” is another They Might Be Giants song, penned by John Flansburgh, which is also found on the “Miscellaneous T” compilation – something I talked about only three days ago. For me, it has the same back story as “The Biggest One”. I began to listen to their discography in 2011, found “Miscellaneous T” and downloaded the tracks.
“Birds Fly” is a jazzy number with a walking bassline, background vocals akin to a barbeshop quartet and blocks as the percussion. It makes the song sound very pleasant, light and very easy to listen to. It sounds like it’s about someone who’s arrested by the police for driving recklessly though. I guess you can say it’s got that “Maxwell Silver Hammer” thing going on, with the happy music and the… more serious lyrics.
The song was originally going to be released as a B-side to the “Purple Toupee” single. That was never released though. But it does show that it recorded during the sessions for “Lincoln”. It is very similar to “Lie Still, Little Bottle”, in so many ways in fact that I think it would have been a shoe in on the album if the band thought “Lie Still” wasn’t good enough.
Here it is, They Might Be Giant’s biggest song. Commercially anyway. This, “Istanbul” and “Boss of Me” were their only songs to chart in the UK. Shows how much we know about music. I’m only joking, we know quite a bit about music. It’s a shame we just never appreciated this band as much.
I’ve just woken up from a nap so please excuse any spelling mistakes, or anything that clearly doesn’t make any sense.
They Might Be Giants released “Birdhouse in Your Soul” as the first single from their major label debut, “Flood”. The song, from the perspective a ‘blue canary’ night-light who ‘watches over you’ in your sleep. Not in any strange kind of way, but to guard you from the demons and monsters of the night. Like a guardian angel, it’s always near.
Now I don’t know what affect the song had on people when it was initially released in 1990. I still had another five years to go until I was born, but judging from the stats I see on Wikipedia and TMBW it helped the band gain a bigger following of fans after reaching top ten positions in the UK and in the US Modern Rock chart in the US.
When I was younger and started listening to They Might Be Giants, I knew that I’d heard the song from somewhere. Perhaps in an advert, or it played in the background of a TV show or something. But I didn’t know it was the band who sung it. I watched the video on Yahoo’s LAUNCHcast website, and it made me like the song even more. The weird zombie children, the random bike riding around the band, the choreography, it’s nice to see the band in one of their music videos too.
If you want to listen to the demo from Dial-a-Song, here it is.
This song was originally released on the “(She Was a) Hotel Detective EP” from 1988, but it was released again on the compilation “Miscellaneous T” – a collection of B-Sides recorded between 1986 and 1989 – released in 1991 after the band’s success with “Flood”. Now I assume that B-Sides are those songs that bands consider to be sub-par to material released on commercial albums, but “Miscellaneous T” is a mighty fine album and no one should underestimate the songs on it.
I first listened to the album in 2011 when I was revising for my GCSEs, and “The Biggest One” was a track that stood out, just because it’s the most ‘hard rock’ song as it gets on the album, with blaring horns and a stomping drum pattern.
“The Biggest One” is sung by John Flansburgh, and is another track where he puts real gusto behind his voice. It’s got a real throaty approach to it. It’s described as an “unlikely song of self-pity” in the liner notes of “Then: The Earlier Years“, maybe because the band weren’t into writing a song about the subject matter. It is about a person who blames everything that happens around him on his ‘fat self’. That’s all there is to it, really. There’s also a small Gloria Gaynor reference thrown in there to for a bit of humour.
Again, I didn’t have time to make a post yesterday. Well I did, but I was too tired. I went paintballing you see. ‘Twas my first time too. I knew it would be painful, and it was my first experience of being shot at with something. It wasn’t too bad. It was much better than I thought it would be. The paint balls do sting upon contact, and I’ve got a few bruises here and there. I’m fine though. It was all good fun.
This is the first of the two I’ll do today. So here’s another by a favourite band of mine. Yeah, TMBG.
“The Bells Are Ringing” is the final track on the band’s last album from Elektra Records. “Factory Showroom” is the album’s name.
I first heard the song due to the LAUNCHcast radio/website that Yahoo! owned years ago, it came up randomly one of the genre-assorted radios that were available. I heard it that one time, and so forgot about it pretty quickly. YouTube didn’t exist that time, so to listen to a song in full for free on the Internet was a pretty hard thing to do.
I’m not a Malcolm in the Middle fan – I’ve never really watched the show before – but this song also featured in one episode called ‘Christmas’. For that, I just assumed that the song was a Christmas tune, but that’s only because of the mentioning of bells. Bells are something that are common at Christmas time, right? It’s doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas though. The subject of the song, in my opinion, is about this fad that’s caught on by everyone, with the fad being represented as the bells in the song. The bridge brings light upon ‘a girl with cotton in her ears’ who is oblivious to it, but people go on about it and then begins to appreciate it. It’s got a real ‘1984’ theme about it.
At the end of the song, everybody’s happy and those ‘bells’ (which are sung) keep on ringing amongst an increasing volume in marching drums.
I think it’s a happy song, but with They Might Be Giants I can never really be sure.
The Music in My Ears 