Issue 39: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

Medulla Vesuvius’s Favorites: Top Nine Songs by They Might Be Giants


Favorite TMBG songs

These are in no particular order and are all readily available on iTunes.

  • “Birdhouse in Your Soul” off the album Flood
    In Gigantic, the documentary film about They Might Be Giants, Dave Eggers gushes about this song in a way that makes it sound as if it’s a work by Shakespeare or Keats. One of the highlights of the movie is their performance of this song on the Johnny Carson show with Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band. The flow of this song from its two-part chorus to the climax of the two parts in counter-point against each other is worth the price of admission alone.

  • “Letterbox” off the album Flood
    The beauty of this song is its tongue-twister-like speed of lyrical delivery over moderate tempo musical backing. Also dig the subtlety of the second verse’s introduction of a vocal harmony.

  • “Fingertips” off the album Apollo 18
    The attraction of this one’s easy. It’s twenty different songs in one.

  • “Man, It’s So Loud in Here” off the album Mink Car
    This is their first foray into noticeable electronic gadgetry with the vocoder on the intro and the Cher “Believe”-esque futzing with the title line. This catchy dance number is a perverse beauty.

  • “Sleeping in the Flowers” off the album John Henry
    It takes the 90s grunge aesthetic one level further with menacing verses followed by super-catchy upbeat choruses happier than anything produced by the flannel set. Also amusing to me is my high school friends’ mishearing the first line” I’ve got a crush” as “I got a crotch…”

  • “Damn Good Times” off the album The Spine
    This song is an exercise in distraction. The title actually occurs in what is technically a background line to the chorus. But it’s clearly the catchiest bit of the song.

  • “Destination Moon” off the album John Henry
    You’ll not hear a more mathematically beautiful verse melody in their catalog. This song is a rarity in that the verse and chorus are both insanely memorable.

  • “Exquisite Dead Guy” off the album Factory Showroom
    This is the most obscure song on this list and probably the most acquired of acquired tastes. It’s got a wordless chorus and lots of close secundal harmonies that are jarring, yet balanced by a B section that is more conventional.

  • “New York City” off the album Factory Showroom
    Surely the best They Might Be Giants song that they didn’t write. (It was actually written and originally performed by Cub.) If you’re in the mood for pop-rawk that will stay in your head, this is your song.

All right, so that’s my nine They Might Be Giants favorites. What say you, dear reader?

September 5, 2007
6 Comments



I concur with your list, except I am not sure I would ever be able to limit myself to just nine. “How Can I Sing Like A Girl” is a favorite, as is “Wearing A Raincoat.” And recently because of Philip, so is the long version of “Robot Parade.”

Comment by Clancy Lass 09.05.07 @ 3:22 pm

Oh, yeah! The electric piano break on “Robot Parade” is fantastic!

“How Can I Sing…”—”I want to raise my freak flag higher and higher”…It should be the motto for this site, doncha’ think?

I need you to explain “Wearing a Raincoat” for me, though.

I’ve still never really been able to suss out what it all actually means. (Not that finding the meaning is all that important for TMBG songs. The music is usually more than enough to sustain you.)

Comment by Medulla Vesuvius 09.05.07 @ 5:13 pm

My two deductions for that song are it’s either about writer’s block (which is what I think Stalk of Wheat is about) or the “mind diarrhea” that happens when you can’t sleep and are trying to think of something to lull yourself. The “I can take something to help me sleep, but then I’ll just sleep, and I won’t be able to wake up, but I need to sleep in order to be awake tomorrow, but if I take something it will be like going into a comatose state and it won’t be genuine sleep and then I’ll have all sorts of delusional thoughts so why bother.”

Comment by Clancy Lass 09.05.07 @ 6:23 pm

if i could add one to the list it might be “why did you grow a beard?” i feel the lyrical work in this song is exquisite…much like a dead guy

Comment by statica 09.06.07 @ 7:55 pm

I have a negative experience associated with “Why Did You Grow a Beard?”

That is the song they were playing when the power to the stage cut out during that freezing St. Louis concert from hell, (if hell is icy.)

Unfortunately that confusion and general misery occupy the same space in my head as the song.

Comment by Medulla Vesuvius 09.07.07 @ 12:15 pm

I’m glad you didn’t put “Istanbul” on the list. When I first heard of They Might Be Giants I was in college and I knew a couple of guys who liked that song- and they were real assholes.

Comment by Rascal Stallion 09.16.07 @ 8:56 pm

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