When I found out that They Might Be Giants’ ‘Lady Is a Tramp’ – found on their B-Side compilation Miscellaneous T – was a cover of a classic musical number, I went to listen to an earlier take of the track from long ago. It’s been performed by some true greats. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, you name it. Once I did that, it really left me wondering how They Might Be Giants’ version resembled the song in any way.

The Johns’ cover is an instrumental of blaring synthesized trumpets and a bass guitar that gets louder and louder in the mix at various points. It’s only a minute and 20 seconds long. Someone, I assume it’s John Flansburgh, yells “Yeah!” twice and there’s a sample of Carla saying the word ‘tramp’ from her and Otis Redding’s song of the same name. After a few listens I realised that the trumpets loosely follow the original song’s melody in a very jumped up and hyper fashion. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett coincidentally released their cover of the song the same year I heard TMBGs’ for the first time; the melodic similarity was right there. I think They Might Be Giants’ wild take just makes me appreciate their cover a lot more. It’s a very different way of taking on a Broadway musical number.