Tag Archives: they might be giants

#958: They Might Be Giants – Number Three

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‘Number Three’ is a ‘number’ by They Might Be Giants from the point of view of a budding songwriter who’s feeling quite pleased with themselves now that they’ve just finishing writing their third ever song. They don’t know how they came up with the lyrics or where the inspiration came from, and they’ve spent a while trying to make it, but it’s here and they want to tell the listener all about the experience. Appropriately, it’s the third song on They Might Be Giants’ debut album from 1986.

Sandwiched between two of the most popular songs of TMBG’s whole career, ‘Number Three’ is probably nothing more than an a bit of an interlude for some people. A track that doesn’t amount to too much, but keeps the flow of the album going quite smoothly. I may have gone under that category when being first acquainted to the record. But in the years since, I’ve only come to appreciate it more. It may be one and a half minutes in length, though it contains all the elements that make a Giants song enjoyable. And maybe even more. Three- way vocal harmonies in the choruses, a very catchy melody, a bouncy bass and a bustling acoustic guitar, and also a looped sample of a baritone saxophone taken from an obscure 50s Italian song.

The song goes way back in TMBG origins, and according to both Johns Flasburgh and Linnell, it was the third song they ever learned to play. We’ll have to take their word for it. It may be that somewhat sentimental reason that they’ve performed the song live over 200 times. That stats taken from the band’s dedicated wiki site, it could be even more than that. It’s guaranteed to bring a smile to many a fan’s face though. Below’s the song’s alternative mix when it was released on the band’s 1985 demo tape. Apart from a different introduction and a quieter guitar, it’s very similar to how it ended on the album.

#956: They Might Be Giants – Now That I Have Everything

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‘Now That I Have Everything’ was the first song on They Might Be Giants’ very first demo tape released in 1983. There may be only a few people out there who own that. Unless the track then hadn’t been officially released on Then: The Earlier Years in ’97, the track would most definitely have become one of the many TMBG songs that you could only find in a lower audio quality on a bootleg somewhere. If ‘Everything Right Is Wrong Again’ hadn’t been considered as the album opener to the band’s first album, ‘Now That I Have Everything’ could have taken its spot. Coincidentally, they both have the word ‘everything’ in their titles, but they also have an upbeat inviting tone to them while also sharing a theme of situations not being as great as they seem/used to be.

The track actually goes way back before They Might Be Giants were even a band. Prior to their formation, John Linnell was the keyboard player in a band called The Mundanes and had written the track while in that position. They tried to rehearse the track, but he was too shy to sing out loud. It can only be assumed that he kept it in his locker and was more than ready to do something with it when John Flansburgh came around. To my knowledge, there’s no reason as to why Flansburgh takes the lead vocal on the track instead of Linnell, but I’m not complaining because he does such a fine job. At this point it would feel strange to hear Linnell on the vocal, even though it’s his song. Maybe Flansburgh could pull off the ‘man who has everything’ persona that the track is based on. Who knows, it’s all suggestions. Those are my ramblings on the vocals over.

Like a lot of other They Might Be Giants songs, the melody is all there instantly. I don’t know how they do it, but they possess a abundant knack for that stuff that’s difficult to find. Unlike other TMBG songs, there’s a distinct absence of guitar. Instead the keyboards provide the rhythm chords and lead riffs, noticeably during the track’s outro and a little part about 45 seconds in that borrows the melody from a 1963 song called ‘On Broadway’. While the Johns perform in standard 4/4 time, the programmed drums are playing in 5/4, which provide this chaotic feel as these fills and cymbal hits come in at seemingly random points. You’re never quite sure where the downbeat is. Funnily enough, the drum track was taken directly from a drumbeat CD, and you can listen to that exact beat here. So yes, a good mix of musically interesting and melodic accessibility. That’s really all you ever need from a song. It’s on show here. It’s on show a lot of the time with TMBG.

#951: They Might Be Giants – Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes

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Hey, this is no joke one of my favourite songs of all time right here. First time I heard ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes’ was when I would have been going through They Might Be Giants’ debut album in early 2011 or something. The connection I had with the song from that initial point was instantaneous. The band’s debut album is my personal favourite of theirs, and I believe that this song encapsulates everything the album offers in its two minute runtime. A fun melody, great hooks, undeniable catchiness, little moments that leave you thinking “what the hell was that?” It’s all there. And it’s so darn repeatable, I could listen to it for an hour straight.

There’s an interpretation about this track that I’ve seen online that kinda shocked me a bit. Before I’ll reveal it, I’ll tell you my initial thought, which I was quite happy to go along before I did the further research. Making it quick, I thought it was about a person who was basically happy with their life even though there was all this chaos going on around them. Everyone’s going crazy, yet this narrator looks in the mirror and is happy to be alive – a dancing skeleton in a fleshy overcoat. Although everything actually as great as everyone’s making it out to be, living in an ‘ignorance is bliss’ type state, I guess. The narrator isn’t be the one to bring everyone down. Their just gonna go ahead and live their life. Nothing’s gonna change their world, or in this case, clothes. So when I recently read an idea that the track was actually from the point of view of a dead person in their coffin describing the gifts that have been left in the casket, it left me with some thinking to do.

Whatever the track may or may not be about, I never let it get in the way of how I feel when that swinging high-hat pattern starts. It’s a programmed high-hat, but that doesn’t stop the foot from tapping. Things from then on just come as a bonus. The song’s filled with these small licks and moments that occur for mere seconds, but when you hear them enough they’re very hard to forget. Like those drawn out ‘yooo’ backing vocals, or that ascending guitar riff that comes in before the choruses. Of course, I have to tip my metaphorical hat to John Linnell, who sings the tune with a cool combination of looseness while also staying in time and reaching notes with an incredible tightness. The heavy breakdowns of the chorus endings add another unexpected angle to things and then to add to that John Flanburgh’s “Ever? AAAHHH!” right at the song’s conclusion, makes for one of the most cathartic endings in TMBG’s catalogue. I’m gonna go ahead and link the track’s demo below ’cause it’s just as good, and Linnell sounds even looser than he does on the album.

#930: They Might Be Giants – No One Knows My Plan

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They Might Be Giants’ 1994 album John Henry was the first where Johns Linnell and Flansburgh were accompanied by a live band rather than the drum machines and synth-instruments that had been their go-to method up to that point. Upon the album’s arrival, fans were greeted with guitar-prominent instrumentals, an actual bass guitar and live drums, and brass. There’s a lot of horns on this album. Today’s track, ‘No One Knows My Plan’, is one of those tracks to feature them. Brass can sometimes be one of those instrumental groups where, if heard too much in one sitting, they can be a bit overbearing. But you’ve got to appreciate the instrumental melody of the trumpet that triumphantly opens this song. Once you do that, it’s plain sailing from there.

The track arrives at the album’s midpoint, acting as something of an opener to its second half. With its conga-esque rhythms and ascending/descending scale riffs, it helps pick up the momentum after the contemplative turn the preceding song takes. In ‘No One Knows…’, the narrator is planning an escape from a prison cell, and the track is practically the tale of the narrator’s thoughts, feelings and experiences they’ve had while trying to fulfil this act. They tried to escape before, but have since realised that they’ve had to change their tactics. They’re always scheming, but they’ll never tell anyone the full angle. All this described under a skipping drum pattern, a horn group that undergo the role that a rhythm guitar would usually cover, and with a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave put in for good measure.

This one’s been a favourite of mine for the longest time. Not just from John Henry, but out of the whole TMBG catalogue. The melody’s so infectious. Once you’ve got that in your head, it’s hard to get rid of it. I’ll go ahead and admit that the album in particular isn’t one of my favourites by They, but it’s not without its highlights. ‘No One Knows…’ is for sure one of them. Back in the day, someone at the Cartoon Network offices must have liked the track too. It was used as the intro music to Cartoon Planet for a while.

#922: They Might Be Giants – Nightgown of the Sullen Moon

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If you were one of the OG They Might Be Giants fans back in the 80s and around when ‘They’ll Need a Crane’ was released as another single from the band’s Lincoln album, you would have been lucky to stumble upon ‘Nightgown of the Sullen Moon’. The track was one of three B-sides on the They’ll Need a Crane EP, alongside ‘It’s Not My Birthday’ and ‘I’ll Sink Manhattan’. Once the two Johns were signed to major-label Elektra Records, another compilation was then released including all of the B-sides the band had officially released in the form of Miscellaneous T which a brought something of a larger attention to it.

There are a few interpretations as to what this track is about. There’s a selection you can see on the band’s dedicated Wiki page. From my point of view, I always saw it as a description of a person’s transition into the next life after falling into a door in an awkward manner and dying on the spot. Sounds quite tragic, but you’ll see the lyrics and kind of get it. The first verse describes the accident, I would take the titular ‘nightgown’ as heaven pretty much, and the following verse captures the person’s feelings of being within this new environment. They’re not on drugs, but they feel like they’re floating on air. And they begin to feel bored eventually, which shares the same sentiment as that Talking Heads song that’s also about heaven. In typical TMBG fashion, the song’s dang catchy and the melody throughout is off the charts, contrasting with the almost brutal subject. It’s also carried by this great I want to say Calypso-influenced rhythm, that’s accentuated by the introduction of bongos in the final choruses. There’s a lot of syllables John Linnell has to sing in each line, and there are points where you can him hear him inhaling sharply between them so he has enough breath. For a song that’s only two minutes, it’s filled with little things here and there that you can pick out with each listen

Like John Lennon with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, John Linnell was inspired to write the track of its name after being shown a drawing that a person’s child had drawn. It’s a very poetic phrase, ‘nightgown of the sullen moon’. Reminds me of something you’d see in those classic books. Very unique. But it came as a surprise to Linnell when he found that the phrase was already the title of a children’s book that had been published in 1983. Must have taken some of the magic out of the phrase just that bit. According to the wiki, it’s one of the band’s most popular songs, but they’ve never performed it live. If they ever did, it would be a sight.