YOUTH CULTURE POLLED MY DOG: They Might Be Giants (first 21 years) POLL RESULTS

https://i.imgur.com/e5N49Ze.jpg

Twenty balloteers (eventually) voted for 228 songs, out of 431 eligible.

The lowest scoring song was Mas Fun (a one-minute instrumental used in a Malcom In The Middle episode), on 5 points. The lowest-scoring song with more than one vote was Mono Puff's It's Fun To Steal, with 17 points.
There were more State Song partisans than Puff patriots. The Otis Ball song that They both sang BVs on received a single vote, and was the only voted-on outside project never to be co-opted under the TMBG banner. (I think.)

Seven voters also included albums, but I'm guessing five of them didn't read the eligibility list. The album results:

9 Mink Car
8 No!
7 John Henry
6 Factory Showroom
5 Miscellaneous T / Then: The Earlier Years / etc
4 the 1985 self-titled cassette
3 Apollo 18
2 Lincoln
1 Flood

and now for the songs:

77: Snail Shell
337 points, 5 votes

single, 1994:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDnWiLw5QtQ

Snail Dust remix by the Dust Brothers

woohoo!

"Snail Shell" is a tough one for me. sorta everything that doesn't work about the John Henry sound and what i imagine was someone's idea about them competing in an alt-rock market as the funny/quirky sideshow, the way Presidents of the United States of America ended up doing the following year. John L's delivery (SIR HAND!) still sells something to me, and the stop-start quality of the chorus, slap bass or no, makes it feel more of a piece with their earlier material. it could fit in on apollo 18 more than a lot of these tracks, and i did vote for it low on my ballot. the biggest problem i have with it is that it sorta wears out its welcome at 3:30 since there's only two verses and neither has too much going on.

that remix is pretty excellent though

76: For Science
347 points, 5 votes

b-side on Hotel Detective EP, 1988

wrong link

haven't listened to "snail dust" in ages and ages. i definitely owned back to skull at one point. but it's interesting to listen to it now, feels like even more of a period piece than the main mix, but i like it for ejecting the song from the arrangement. i really don't want to come off like a knee-jerk hater of the full-band john henry incarnation but some of the recordings on that are just so so boringly straightforward. and what makes the earlier albums so exciting is how unpredictable the sounds are both between tracks and within single tracks - you'd get to the chorus or the bridge and a whole new sound explodes out of the mix, suddenly it's a marimba-led band with a barrage of staccato guitar notes cascading through, then it all disappears on cue when the verse comes around again. rhythmic change-ups too, all the stop-start moves. the joys of the MIDI method. maybe more present in linnell's songs than in flans's given the latter's stronger interest in pop and rock genre work.

idk, some scattered thoughts but i've been thinking about this a ton as i've been listening to my ballot-as-playlist, imagining it all being released in instrumental versions. boy that'd be great. though i was surprised to realize how much of apollo 18 was already more "live" feeling. i mean i'm sure they just felt they'd done as much as they could with their existing tools and all the tech meltdowns and frustrations would drive anybody mad.... but they were just never quite the same band again, even if they got more comfortable playing with the larger group and found ways to do more interesting things with it.

For Science correct link!

i used to love "For Science" as one of several little oddities filling out Miscellaneous T. not a track i'd actively seek out or put on but a revealing curio. the 50s b-movie vibe and the pompous speaker remind me tremendously of MST3K (and especially Tom Servo), which debuted on local TV the same year this single dropped. not to say there's any direct connection, but joel hodgson and the johns were all born within one year's time and i think there's some shared gen-x sensibility in how they approach these inherited boomer materials as well as the DIY low-tech hi-tech approach and some other preoccupations (the number of robot doubles and B-horror scenarios suggested in the johns' lyrics having already been noted).

75: How Can I Sing Like A Girl?
350 points, 6 votes

from Factory Showroom album, 1996

live on The Spud Goodman show c. 1996

Right after voting I realized that I had accidentally put "For Science" probably way too high on my ballot (#30 or so I think) but I decided not to email a correction because it's a pretty nice bit of silliness.

As for the albums, Apollo 18 never really clicked for me and I like Lincoln best but "Flood" is for sure Flans's best album.

both of those Spud live versions are better that the album versions imo

How Can I Sing Like a Girl? is about trying to hit the high note on "Hotel Detective", right? thought I'd hear that at some point.

"Snail Shell" was the lead single from John Henry, right? To me this is a misfire from an album I basically like. Such a self-conscious "we rock now" move. Per Setlist they haven't played this live since 2011.

Can't hear "How Can I Sing Like A Girl?" without mentally interposing backing vocals from Cars "My Best Friend's Girlfriend"

I don't personally care for "Snail Shell" or "How Do I Sing Like a Girl?" but I'm sure I voted for plenty of BS that others in this thread will be amazed anyone voted for.

yeah idk what they were thinking making that the leadoff single. so many better songs on that album.

I take it as a kind of new-sound mission statement, the "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us" of live-band-TMBG

Seventy-four: 32 Footsteps
353 points, 5 votes

on They Might Be Giants cassette 1985, The Pink Album 1986

"Subliminal" does that really well though

I petered out my ballot at 65-70 (the ones I identified as true favorites on a first pass) or so rather than fill out the remaining 30-35 songs with a random assortment of TMBG songs I like. "32 Footsteps" is one of those that probably could have filled out the rest of my ballot.

73: Hide Away Folk Family
359 points, 6 votes

on The Pink Album, 1986

live on Joy Farm c. 1987:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-3sIJ_N3mw

D'oh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo_AmcFcJCY

i voted for "32 footsteps" much higher than i would have thought, now that i look at my ballot it could have easily ended up in the lower mush of songs i basically like but don't have much to say about. typically for the pink album, i like how much it packs into a minute and a half. the ping-pang-pingalong vocals are fun. i remember a fun interpretation on usenet or tmbg.org where someone argued this was about a guy who was supposed to meet back up with his girl in one month (31 days) but screws it up by counting to 32 (29? NO! 30? NO! etc...) and is left lonely and wondering what went wrong. sort of a "havana moon" thing. "thirty-two lies my ears never saw when the floorboards gave way" is one of those archetypal early TMBG lyrics in that it's riiiiight on the edge of being too cutesily-clever for its own good but gets by on the momentum of the piece.

"how can i sing like a girl" otoh is terrible imo, my least favorite kind of midtempo flans song that earnestly hopes to join the new indie-pop canon without enough hooks or energy to make that happen. and it's four and a half minutes long! with no new musical ideas after the first like thirty seconds (barring an attempt at a psych-era Beatles ending, which he'd already done better on "See The Constellation").

^ stop stigmatising him!

I feel like the tune of 'For Science' is similar to 'Birthday Girl' by Microdisney, the "flowers die and so will I"/"people die, so will I" are too similar for it just to be a coincidence?

72: Road Movie To Berlin
370 points, 7 votes

on Flood LP, 1990
covered by Frank Black c. 2006

everything's had 5-7 votes so far, I wonder if we'll start to see more variation as people's idiosyncratic faves start to kick in

oh yay the first one i voted for. i still get surprised by the synth freakout when it comes in. it's such a nice traditional country song before then haha

also, this is one of my favorites of their stanzas:

We were once so close to heaven
Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the damned

yeah i love the lyrics on "road movie," especially that stanza. but oddly it's "time won't find the lost / it'll sweep up our skeleton bones" that pops into my mind the most. see, i don't just hate flans!

i was watching the berlin-obsessed wings of desire (1987) the other day and noticed ROAD MOVIES FILMPRODUKTION in the credits. could easily imagine that sparking something with these guys.

also now i really wanna see the nick cave concert scenes dubbed over with this song, could be great

71: Weep Day
374 points, 6 votes

a Dial-A-Song c. 1984, released on Then, 1997
1983 demo version

yesssssss

"samba time for Tambo and weep day for Urine Man" is such a great dumb inside-joke starting point for a lyric. and then it ends up with these weird little philosophy-101 reflections on the nonexistence of simultaneity. great.

also, shout out to sic for picking a great thread title. there were a billion options, but this feels like the right one.

yeah I'd like to think TMBW.net for explaining that one

I cant imagine anyone getting that when they actually hear the song

now that I'm reading the lyrics...a lot of the lines from Lincoln sorta originated here right? "Every man is made of two opinions/Every woman has a second half"

I know WFMU was regularly playing stuff by these guys no later than 1985; I first saw them in '87 at the Loop Lounge, Passaic NJ.

Was a huge fan at least up through Apollo 18, but i didn't vote.

I guess I've heard this song before, since I own "Then" but I have no memory or knowledge of it whatsoever.

first one I don't know, I'll bet there'll be more

ooh i like that reading of lincoln. i think i got "tambo-urine man" from the then liner notes back in the day.

one bummer of the ballot-playlist system for me: the then bonus stuff is not on spotify (though miscellaneous t is and covers most of the essentials). other big missing links: "sensurround," "mrs. train," and the unhelpfully-titled sequel song "she was a hotel detective."

"And it wasn't me you punched a hole in
At the west German protest march"

yeah this is very purple toupee somehow

also, shout out to sic for picking a great thread title. there were a billion options, but this feels like the right one.

thanks! the voting thread title was better, but the future tense needed to be used there. obvs there were loads of great options like Birdhouse In My Poll and I Polindrome I, but this had a definitive tone to it.

Morbs: some WFMU-exclusive versions coming up as links (and back in the voting thread)

DC: do you know there is now a trilogy song called She Was A Hotel Detective In The Future?

missed opportunity to call it (She Will Have Been A) Hotel Detective

70: Turn Around
378 points, 6 votes

on Apollo 18 album, 1992

I sort of see this as the Apollo 18 version of "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" (which I like somewhat better.)

Think I didn't vote for this, probably should have.

69: Piece Of Dirt
406 points, 9 votes

on Lincoln LP, 1988
performed by The Avatars Of They, 2015

I voted for “Turn Around” downballot. I’ve always enjoyed the song though the chorus does fall a bit flat.

I like Turn Around. Their songs about the shadow of death are usually good. Where You're Eyes Don't Go is another one similar one.

The last verse about the train engineer with the paper-white mask of evil face is one of my favourite moments

68: A Self Called Nowhere
416 points, 6 votes, 1 #1

on John Henry album, 1994

piece of dirt was a late cut for me, i just couldn't vote for that vocal

"Or to fly... I'd fly away" is great tho

“A Self Called Nowhere” at #1? Wild. I have never once thought about this song, though I’ve heard nothing t dozens of times.

Wtf autocorrect “I’ve heard it dozens of times”

wow at that #1 vote. the joys of fandom, it takes all kinds!

i did once think the song sounded pretty dark and cool-sounding, and i think about it almost any time i encounter an electric organ. another one where i'd love to hear it in a pre-JH arrangement, perhaps a less ponderous one. "it's a thing named it, in a bottomless pit, you can't see it there" sounds cool to me.

apparently they made simple MIDI versions of all the john henry tracks and put them out as a hypercard stack?? you can hear them here though they're obviously not finished TMBG songs. this site supposedly emulates the hypercard stack, but requires Flash.

a 2007 podcast also unveiled full-band demos (follow link to MP3) which i'm just now skimming. they're not radically different but they sound better to my ears. i'm not enough of a production head to be precise about this but maybe what i'm hearing is the absence of compression? "no one knows my plan," one of my favorites from the album, sounds a little looser, and a little less cluttered without guitar overdubs (and no solo!) muddying up the mix. "out of jail" isn't better than the album version (another one of my favorites from that record) but something about the guitar attack makes it clearer how it belongs in the flans staccato-guitar canon going back to "ana ng" etc. "a self called nowhere's" chorus still lands hard but there's no effect on linnell's voice and that too is fairly refreshing i gotta say.

they're releasing a full remastered CD edition of the John Henry demos in December: https://tmbgifc.com/ -- sign up by midnight to also get two posters designed by the screenwriter of Antz, sign up any time to get downloads of three new albums from 2018, one not-available-to-the-public live album from 2018, a 7", a T-shirt, a keychain, two guitar picks and various other stuff.

https://tmbgifc.com/static/ifc2018/images/product_images/Poster_SaturdayEveningPost_ToddAlcott.jpg

67: I Should Be Allowed To Think
429 points, 7 votes

on John Henry album, 1994
earlier Dial-A-Song version

whoa thought that would be top 20

So far, not a lot of songs I voted for, but "For Science" is awesome

When I prepped my ballot, I first made a playlist of my indisputable all time top fave TMBG tracks. That ended up amounting to 26 songs. This is the first of those 26 to appear. I have to admit, I’m a bit sad to see it so low.

You've started! Re: albums, did the 1986 S/T "Pink" LP get no votes beside mine then?

(All the cool kids favour the demo, maybe? Or I'm amongst those those failing to grasp eligibility criteria? :) )

i also voted for the s/t album, in third place. wondering if maybe that got counted as a vote for the demo? not that many album ballots overall so it's no biggie imo.

hands up, who else's first introduction to "howl" was through the opening lines of "i should be allowed to think"?

really love the way these guys do those soaring background vocals on their choruses. this song is probably one of the best examples of that

I had Hide Away Folk Family in my top 5 I think, surprised it's so low

(All the cool kids favour the demo, maybe? Or I'm amongst those those failing to grasp eligibility criteria? :) )

you and I were the only two to vote for The Pink Album - as I hinted, I assume the five votes for They Might Be Giants meant to vote Pink, but it was funnier to run with the votes as submitted since nobody really cared about the EPs / albums element

66: South Carolina
431 points, 6 votes

on John Linnell's State Songs EP, 1994 & album, 1999

I love this song. Happy it made the list, it was in my top 25

this stuff about the s/t / pink album is going right over my head - it's called they might be giants right?

South Carolina SO GOOD, I was worried I was the only State Songs Stan here. "Lift that fork, eat that snail, garçon summon up a new cocktail" one of their very finest convoluted strings of syllables.

Somehow missed "Hide Away Folk Family," yes, that's surprisingly low! To me it's one of the defining songs on the debut.

AQUARIUS: ABANDON HOPE FOR FUTURE PLANNNNS

I think I like every song where the bridge consists of one John doing a megaphone declarative over some kind of chaotic musical interlude.

^ ha ha, otm

it's called they might be giants right?

yes, but so was the sold-for-money 1985 cassette (reissued in 1993), so I called the 1986 LP "The Pink Album" in all the eligibility lists

65: Sleeping in the Flowers
443 points, 8 votes

on John Henry album, 1994

there's this whole aspect to the debut, in things like that "daily home astrology report," which puts them much much closer to idk laurie anderson and talking heads and was not was.... stuff that today has much more "cool" nyc 80s art-world type cred, versus the "beloved by high school dorks like doctor casino" image. not saying they should be ranked as more cool than they are just that they've maybe been misread a bit. or maybe a lot of those 80s art postures became standard high school dork moves via channels including TMBG, i dunno. i think i've made this exact post before, and recently maybe.

xxp oh ha, i didn't read the eligibility lists, just the line that said you could vote for x number of albums or EPs. that's on me then!

I think I've made that exact post before DC! In that early TMBG is 100% definitely a downtown performance experiment about the concept of the "rock band" which sort of accidentally turns into an actual rock band.

there is a strong, sad possibility i read it from you, repeated it out loud at some point, and convinced myself it was my brilliant original thought

Well, whoever's thought it was, it's definitely the case.

downtown performance experiment about the concept of the "rock band"

Oh god! I realised while compiling a ballot that I'm hopelessly biased toward the early output and could only come up with "there's a tiny of bit more of The Residents to them" or something. Y'all capture it better.

"South Carolina" was my #4. Would be the standout track on any of the TMBG albums of that time period.

"32 Footsteps" was my #5. I'm old enough to have Lou Reed's pre-death vocal range, but I can still sing this one.

Started a Spotify playlist, if only as a means of belatedly 'getting' John Henry. :) Just made it 'collaborative' if anyone's into that.

https://open.spotify.com/user/empeecee/playlist/33vPnKhNeF8NA5ZDNC8k6D?si=-_WjGXjrRSuaj2YUpijmNw

the back wheel's 'O' is now a letter 'D'/ I was an 'I' and now I am a 'V'

- I love this, feel like it's another one of those lyrics Dr Casino mentioned earlier that's right on the verge of being too cute for its own good but just gets away with it

I was think I posted something in the voting thread about how it seemed a big part of the TMBG aesthetic is the kind of stuff that kids think about to blow their minds, like when you'd write your address but keep going after the street, town etc so it said "the earth, the solar system, the milky way, the universe" etc

like, I remember being a child and reading about astronomy, and sort of enjoying that vertiginous feeling of catching a glimpse of how tiny and irrelevant you are compared to the vastness of the universe, kind of like the Total Perspective Vortex from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I think this broken perspective is something evoked in a lot of TMBG songs, a connection between something very small/specific/close and the hugeness of the world or the universe? like the stopped clock in Four Of Two that's still there in the far future world is kind of like the endlessly continuing address thing, this fixed point from which you navigate the enormity of everything, and I think there's that kind of perspective in A Self Called Nowhere as well

they have lots of songs about being in two places at once, or being in one place and thinking of another place - and there's a kind of paradox where this ruminating of the vastness of the world/universe is 'looking outwards', but also - because you can't see this stuff directly. you can only conceive of it - it's also 'looking inwards'? in practise it means creating a private inner world apart from the actual world and landscape and society around you, TMBG capture something about that woozy perspective and sensation of moving outwards and inwards at the same time

My familiarity with TMBG is pretty much Flood-and-a-bit-of-Lincoln, but yeah, that sounds otm to me. It's less than 50 seconds from "Particle Man" to "Size of the Entire Universe Man".

I re-read the bit of Hitchhikers where the Total Perspective Vortex appears and it sounds very TMBG-esque imo -

The total perspective vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic amalyses of pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a single piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realised that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

- especially those songs that describe a thing that can obliterate someone just by them looking at it or thinking about it - "the statue made me fry/my coat contained a furnace where there used to be a guy', "the spiraling shape will make you go insane" etc

the Total Perspective Vortex reminds me of descriptions I've read of the experience of taking LSD, (I guess that is at least part of the inspiration for the concept?), stripping away the sense of self, allowing you to 'perceive' the universe as a whole? a lot of TMBG deals with similar subjects to pop music that is drug inspired (weird sensory stuff, disorientation) but the TMBG version always sounds very un-druggy to me, and reminds me more of childhood stuff where you would be aware of the sheer weirdness of having a body (I guess this is less pronounced as you get older as you get used to it, or just because you have less time to sit around on your own thinking about this stuff?) - e.g. I remember spending time looking in a mirror closing and opening my eyes hoping that if I did it quickly enough I'd catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my eyes closed, that kind of thing.

there's not a clear distinction between the TMBG songs about being involved in a vivid inner life, like Nobody Knows My Plans, and the ones about the outer world, the vastness of the universe and the relative smallness of you and your inner world, if you go far enough in one direction you meet yourself coming back (and all those songs where recursion shows up) - it all gives this feeling of someone exploring the universe from inside their own head

"I will never say the word 'procrastinate' again; I'll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed.". Great posts soref.

Yeah soref highly otm. I would add that the preoccupation with death is definitely part of this -- the awareness that your lifespan is a tiny bounded zone of existence inside the vast realms of time in which either no longer exist or have never existed.

also i would note that their explorations of these concepts never feel in any way druggy or drug-inspired. maybe in part because the meticulous construction of their MIDI/sampler recordings produces a tightly-wired, clockwork-machine effect when listening, no trippy instrumental journeys or even a hair's breath for the track. you wind up "purple toupee" and it's just clattering down the track. but conceptually they're also more like twilight zone episodes or brain-teaser puzzles than "woahhh did you ever really think about how we'll all turn to dust, maaaan" musings. they're interested in the boundary between life and death and the expanding universe in the same way they're interested in, like, the formalist challenge of writing a palindromic lyric, or a "house that jack built" style song, also things popular with nerdy and verbally-oriented kids. whether this is the chicken or the egg of them seeming kind of square and tame when i try to sell friends on them, i dunno.

tiny toons obviously an important factor here if you're of a certain age

disconnect from the brain and body seems to be a common theme with them. "My Man" being a pretty good example

my son just discover TMBG. He would vote "Hot Dog" for #1.

yeah my son asks for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse all the time but doesn't want to watch anything between the opening theme and "Hot Dog". he's definitely got the bug

tiny toons obviously an important factor here if you're of a certain age

FP'd you for racism

64: Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas)
446 points, 7 votes

original from Space Songs, 1959
on Why Does The Sun Shine? EP, 1993
live version on Severe Tire Damage, specified by one voter

re-recorded for Here Comes Science, 2009
corrected as Why Does the Sun Really Shine? (The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma) for Here Comes Science, 2009

Too low!! Total banger live.

I think I can sing that one.

btw every few years I see Linnell on the streets of Brooklyn, and we exchange sheepish grins.

we need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy

the outright covers of old kids' songs might be one area where TMBG doesn't really speak to me, especially on the faithfully nursery-ready 1993 rendition. i'm pretty sure i thought this was kinda neat as a youth, and i bought the CD single ("jessica" was worth it).... but i'm pretty far now from the kinda "we love square po-faced 50s cartoon graphic design" kinda thing. maybe james lileks just spoiled me on it or something. it was obviously a vital source for tons of postmodern camp and some original hybrid aesthetics from circa the B-52s onwards into the 90s, but .... idk, just not a recording i feel an urge to put on and listen to.

i didn't vote for this, but i did vote for a different novelty-esque cover that you probably can guess.

"why did Jamal Khashoggi get the works?"

i'm sorry for that

i hate that it scans

62= My Evil Twin
447 points, 8 votes

on Apollo 18 album, 1992

62= Shoehorn With Teeth
447 points, 9 votes

on Lincoln album, 1988
recalled by Terry Pratchett

voted for both of these.

shoehorn with teeth might be the most insidiously catchy of all insidiously catchy tmbg tracks

yeah see here I absolutely dig them being sing-songy and almost kids-record catchy. it occurred to me that in another era they would have been tin pan alley composers, knocking out tunes for the shows, cause they can do a tune for sure and they have a theater-writer's love of unusual word choices and turns of phrase

people should get beat up for statin' their beliefs

61: The Famous Polka
453 points, 8 votes

b-side to Don't Let's Start, 1987

made me happy to hear some audience members singing along with terry pratchett in that video

xp

love "Shoehorn"

#61 feels about right for "The Famous Polka" - I love and voted for it but it's pretty insubstantial, even by TMBG's standards.

And, whoops, I just see that I forgot to vote for "Shoehorn With Teeth". Ah well, made the cut anyways.

59= The End Of The Tour
456 points, 6 votes

on John Henry album, 1994

59= Subliminal
456 points, 10 votes

on John Henry album, 1994

"Famous Polka" has what may be the greatest line about love they ever wrote: "But when the phone inside her ribcage rings, it's not for me." Just about the perfect combination of real feeling expressed through surrealism and perfect scansion.

58: Lucky Ball & Chain
463 points, 8 votes

on Flood LP, 1990
live on MTV, 1989

"there goes the bride" should be too easy a joke, but it works here, just as does "if it wasn't for disappointment i wouldn't have any appointments" from Snowball in Hell

End of the Tour is another one that I thought would place much higher

I can imagine that "we're never gonna tour again" line freaking a lot of people out back in the day

I love "End of the Tour" and "Lucky Ball and Chain" but voted both fairly low on my ballot, probably too low. In fairness, I dashed off the rankings in a couple of hours while I was on vacation & my wife was sleeping.

57: Women & Men
468 points, 8 votes

on Flood LP, 1990

Feel stupid for forgetting to vote for this, one of their loveliest choruses

"subliminal" is terrific and one of the best uses of the thicker john henry sound. one of the few where I really can't hear it in my head with any other arrangement.

"lucky ball and chain" is one of flans's all-time best. so many good hooks and he musters a genuine emotional center with "but this railroad apartment was the perfect place / when she'd sit and hold me in her arms." love the way the music machine presses on and fades out at the end - the unsteerable train of the lyric, and there goes the bride, off into the distance.

"end of the tour" also quite emotionally affecting. "never to part since the day we met when we kissed at the overpass" only this time it's the unfathomable bond of trauma and survival: a stranger in a car accident, she died, he lived. and man the way of describing the collision: "then came a knock at the door which was odd and the picture abruptly changed."

iirc there used to be an faq entry specifically about the "never gonna tour again" line!

"Women & Men" is a song that I never cared too much about at the peak of my TMBG fandom (in high school, naturally) but when I went back and revisited the TMBG albums a few years ago it really clicked with me. The driving prechorus ("and there's something else on the shoreline...") is one of Flood's true highlights.

Women and Men is one of the funnest to sing imo

56: Older
469 points, 8 votes

on Long Tall Weekend album, 1999:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdIRrmNN_CQ&t=13s

re-recorded on Mink Car album, 2001
demo from Factory Showroom sessions, 1996

whoa people actually like that song

heck it, try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdIRrmNN_CQ

maybe you'll like it when you're older, frogbs

I'm pretty shocked to see this here, but love that clear throwaways like this can have a chance to make it.

this never connected with me at all, kinda contributed to my feeling in '99 that they'd hit a wall or something. i should give it another try later today if it's scoring this high though!

I'm loving all the random videos I've never seen and covers I haven't heard.

"Older" and "Why Does the Sun Shine?" are by far my favorite weirdo joke throwaways in the repertoire, I wonder whether others agree with me and there won't be anymore, or whether the fact that these placed at all means there are more still to come higher up. (Oh unless you count "James K. Polk" as a weirdo joke throwaway -- I don't, and I rate hit higher than these two.)

Original Older is great, Mink Car version is horrible. But it is not alone there.

yea Mink Car definitely the one album that seems to suffer from "too many cooks" syndrome, possibly because it's rare for TMBG to release songs that are 3-5 years old. there are probably a good 5-6 tracks that were better in their demo version.

I think also with 17 years passing, that it was not merely a case of becoming overly familiar with the original versions. A shame, as it was a brilliant era, but they botched up the album good and proper.

I will say though, I love the track "Your Mom's Alright", even though I would bet I'm the only one here who had it on their ballot

I voted for a few tracks on Mink Car but generally speaking was looking at the OG versions.

maybe you'll like it when you're older, frogbs

he already is

Bing bang bingalong, cing cang cingalong, ding dang dingalong day
Fing fang fingalong, Ging gang gingalong, hing hang hingalong hay
Jing jang jingalong, king kang kingalong, ling lang lingalong lay
Ming mang mingalong, ning nang ningalong, ping pang pingalong pay

Somehow never noticed that was alphabetical!

55:They Might Be Giants
473 points, 8 votes

1984 demo, released on TMBG Unlimited
1985 demo from self-titled cassette
re-recorded for Flood LP, 1990

love it so much

boyyyyyy

Man, I really wanna break out my Then comp

This is probably one of the songs I would have voted for downballot if I hadn't been too lazy to extend to 100.

54: Metal Detector
495 points, 9 votes, 1 #1

on Factory Showroom album, 1996
with TMBG Mini-Brass for Studio 360, 2003

Our second #1 vote to appear. Another pretty odd choice to my mind, but I did vote for it.

hang on hang on tight

"Metal Detector" rules, it was such a bummer that alt radio didn't give it more of a chance. All the right lessons learned from John Henry - the big pounding "band" moves are now deployed much more strategically and they make key parts of the song land: "I'm the inspector over the mine - metal detector, watch it shine." Lyricaly it's a bit of an odd character sketch by their standards since there doesn't seem to be anything much wrong or strange about the narrator - he just thinks searching for things with his metal detector is really neat. The preoccupation with the seashore and things "underground" suggests it came from the same creative spark as "Sensurround" so maybe John L was just becoming obsessed with chthonic forces and the subconscious or something.

53: Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal
510 points, 7 votes

Dial-A-Song c. 1988
b-side for unreleased Purple Toupee single, 1989

opening line on that is so classic. as is pretty much every other line

This song is lightweight but man do I love the xylophone trills in it.

51= Boss Of Me
513 points, 7 votes

various studio versions released & broadcast 1999-2001 - video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8y8Ziwswe0

live on Conan O'Brien, 2000
live on The Tonight Show, 2001
wearing spangly suits on Kilborn, 2001
live on TOTP, 2001

malcolm in the middle was one of my favorite shows as a pre-teen, so i had to throw this one a vote.

it still throws me off when the song continues after "life is unfair"

Linnell grinned at me singing along to the verse of Hey Mr DJ a couple of weeks ago which was a major life moment

"Hey Mr. DJ" is terrific, I love the anguish he throws into the chorus and the whole scenario is so pathetically golden. It's basically "Paperback Writer" in concept but also totally its own thing. So weird to think of it as a nearly-lost B-side, since it opens Miscellaneous T with such a xylophonic flourish it just feels like a "major" track to me.

they've played "Boss of Me" a few times when I've seen 'em and they always cut the rest of the song off

maybe I'm biased here but I legitimately think it's one of the best TV themes ever, even if just for how well it captures what that show was all about.

and yea I always assumed Hey Mr. DJ was a standalone single and that the lyrics were sort of meant to refer to the song itself. it does feel like a single. the version they played (with horns!) when I saw them a few months ago was incredible. I was bouncing around and singing along like an idiot.

also a good candidate for the "words that have only appeared in one song" thread : "geometrically"

51= Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes
513 points, 10 votes

as Nothing's Going To Change My Clothes on the 1985 cassette
re-recorded for The Pink Album, 1986

all the people are so happy now their heads are caving in

yoooooooooo

50: Dinner Bell
515 points, 8 votes

on Apollo 18, 1992

Our family routinely uses "dinner bell, dinner bell, DING DING DING!" to summon everyone to the table.

Way too low! Going through my ballot, "Dinner Bell" was the song that I forgot that I freakin loved. Really clever melody and arrangement

My "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "Older" votes are mostly based on the live versions

“Dinner Bell” is the third of the songs in my top 25 to appear

49: Mr. Me
535 points, 8 votes

demo c. 1987 released on TMBG Unlimited

live on Joy Farm c. 1987:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojk077sc5Go

on Lincoln LP, 1988
recorded with TMBG's Other Thing horn section in 2003

"Mr. Me" was my number 1 (hope my ballot was received). I don't think it's a whole lot better than my #20 vote, but it's a fantastic song that I always had a soft spot for. Fun lyrics

your ballot was received!

love mr me

he ended up sad!

xp *thumbs up*

48: Letterbox
540 points, 9 votes

on Flood LP, 1990

live on MTV's 120 Minutes, 1989:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxcTXrMHHs0

in lower audio quality on 120 Minutes in 1988
covered by OKGo c. 2006

One of my favorites on Flood. My friend and I used to play the song on repeat to try and decipher the lyrics to the bridge

i fuckin love mr. me, and it always reminds me of my mom, who got a kick out of the "yo yo yo" vocals.

Completely forgot about "Letterbox" somehow. It's 1990 again here, all of a sudden.

Lyricaly it's a bit of an odd character sketch by their standards since there doesn't seem to be anything much wrong or strange about the narrator - he just thinks searching for things with his metal detector is really neat.

I think of the lyrics to Metal Detector as being of a piece with those other Linnell songs about someone turning away from other people to focus on some solitary esoteric obsession, 'Down at the shore there's a place where there's no one vacationing' 'Then everything on the top will just suddenly stop seeming interesting' seems to come from the same place as 'And though I once preferred a human being's company they pale before the monolith that towers over me' or 'There's only one thing that I like and that is whistling in the dark'

in these songs there's usually a contradictory desire for human contact as well, but on the narrator's own terms, to join him in the obession: 'I've got something to help/make you understand', 'And now it is your turn Your turn to hear the stone and then your turn to burn The stone it calls to you You can't refuse to do the things it tells you to' 'Some day somebody else besides me will call me by my stage name, they will call me Dr Worm'

is it correct to hear an oblique suggestion of cannibalism in Dinner Bell? I guess because of the 'shoulder, bicep, elbow, arm, forearm, thumb, wrist, knuckle, palm, middle, pinky, index, ring' bit? and the connection it makes between the person waiting for the dinner bell and Pavlov's dog, noting the similarity of a human and an animal in the context of food seems to hint at the idea of eating humans

I imagined the 'shoulder, bicep, elbow...' bit as an impulse traveling down the signal path on its way to pick up and ring the bell.

had never realized they were singing actual words there - felt like backwards made up esperanto or something. shorum castle numco town...

and i buy the metal detector user as fitting in with these other pursuers of obsessions... hmm. well still i mean whatever happens in "statue" it seems more intense and maybe destructive ("the statue made me fry") but of course that lyric could also just be doubling down metaphorically on more pedestrian ways of describing a benign crystallizing moment of exposure to art or a person.

metal detector person seems kinda settled and well-adjusted altho i suppose you could read it as the portrait of an eccentric who's become extremely detached from reality (engaging only with unseen and indeed unnamed objects through technological mediation) but is rationalizing it as having a wise, detached perspective that lets him focus on more interesting things. delusions of grandeur or of superior insight come up in other linnell lyrics - "destination moon," "no one knows my plan"

46= See The Constellation
541 points, 9 votes

Dial-A-Song as My Lone Constellation c. 1991
on Apollo 18, 1992

See The Constellation kind of prefigures the shift to more rock sounding stuff on John Henry, but I think it wouldn't work as well with the full bound sound, the staccato electronic rhythm section really works here

I seem to recall that the true lyrics to the weird part of Dinner Bell ending with “and and walk walk a a way way” we’re the subject of much debate in the TMBG online community on the 90s

"I was in the sky, all dressed in black" is such an elegant way of conveying the twist/revelation here. One of Flans's best lyrics throughout: "no cigar, no lady on his arm - just a guy made of dots and lines"; " but the city lights got in my way." I mentioned the Paperback Writer quality upthread - the super locked-down electronic rhythm both makes it feel *more* like peak, super-tight mod combo Beatles, and more alien and original with the punched-in sampler backing vocals and stuff. Such a cool recording.

clearly Weird Al was a fan of this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvM6bNwfTIg

years and years later i found out that "I Remember Larry" is a very specific parody of/tribute to the new wave obscurity "Calling All Girls" by Hilly Michaels. but there's easily a bit of TMBG in there... though not as much on his intended Giants tribute on the same album, "Everything You Know Is Wrong"

I've probably mentioned this before but I'm impressed by how well "Everything You Know is Wrong" apes Linnell's songwriting and singing style given that it completely misses the point lyrically - no TMBG song is just a string of non sequiturs like that

that's a great point. but Al likes wacky and "weird" non sequiturs and i feel like his "style" parodies tend to cleave lyrically to his home turf. usually he's parodying a more straightforward artist and so the humor is partly in the juxtaposition of their style and his wackiness. since tmbg are already sorrrrta wacky, it comes off feeling like he doesn't really get Them. i'm guessing al's actually a huge fan though so i think he just hit a double when it could have been a home run.

Everything You Know Is Wrong made me revise my opinion of Weird Al - perhaps the lyrics don't entirely nail Linnell's style, but I suppose it is an affectionate parody. It's about as good as anyone will ever manage.

My main nitpicking issue was that the accordian solo is too technically complicated - they only tried that kind of playing once on The Famous Polka, so it felt a touch gratuitous. But it's a minor niggle.

"Everything You Know is Wrong" nails the TMBG music style with a melody so catchy, I have to imagine TMBG were at least a little jealous, like Mark Mothersbaugh with "Dare to Be Stupid". It's an awesome song. Most of the phrases in EYKIW could be or are straight out of TMBG songs, but yeah, the way they're put together is pretty random. I wonder if Weird Al was just trying to hit as many as possible, rather than write a straight TMBG song

"I was in the sky, all dressed in black" is such an elegant way of conveying the twist/revelation here.

wait i have no idea what you mean

the chorus on "See the Constellation" is so great. I agree there's sort of a mod-era Beatles vibe to it. ending is awesome as well. I think the best TMBG tracks are the ones you can just sit and listen to on repeat for a half hour...this is definitely one of those. I think it was my #5.

It's a jam-packed Linnell phrasing/melody, just stuffed with Al-type signifiers - "Uncle Frank," "rabid wolverine in my underwear," "and said I was a darn good sport," "the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders" etc., all from his normal playground of junky American trash and Dr. Demento rabid-wolverine-is-just-a-funny-phrase-okay? stuff. I suppose there are some things that might come from specific TMBG concepts, like prosthetics (from "We Want A Rock"), "my evil twin," an awkward encounter with St. Peter (from "Road Movie to Berlin"), etc.

Listening again, the musical details are so so great... the horns coming in towards the end of the first verse, or the wham-wham-wham-wham guitars under "but I get the room next to the noisy ice machine." I'd be surprised if anybody else has done as loving a tribute to their style.

Anyway, love this song, especially whatever chord it is the harmony hits on the word "sky" in the chorus

here it is, the first song i regret not voting for. that's a grade-A (for AC/DC) guitar riff.

xxpost oh just like, he's been laying on the ground looking at a constellation, and then in the last line of the last verse, he realizes he's been the constellation all this time. maybe the train came along and hit him and killed him.... or maybe it's just finally hit home for him how liberated/autonomous he is, having passed from his town to the city lights to now, the unknown of the railroad and the sky. the train, after all, is gone and not coming back, so it can't be hitting him: rather, he's realizing just how much his life is no longer on anybody's track at all. it's a more upbeat, if more ambiguous, version of the moved-to-the-city angst of the beach boys' "that's not me" (to pick another 1966 reference point). ambiguous and interesting because there's something scary and alone and horrifying about being detached from material things and human contact (here again i think of "wings of desire"). i'm also reminded of another phrase i was really taken with towards the end of high school, when kurtz is described in heart of darkness as having "kicked himself loose of the earth."

yeah i voted way too low for this one, the songcraft and lyric are both brilliant. should have been top 25.

You are all convincing me I voted this one too low. I had it at #62.

On the one hand, my immediate reaction is "I voted too low" but when I actually look at my top 25, what would I dislodge? Lotta great songcraft coming up.

None of my top 22 have appeared (#23 through #25 all have) though a few of them I'm now starting to doubt will have made the countdown at all.

Only my 21 and 24 have appeared out of my top 25 but I definitely have some idiosyncratic faves up there which probably aren't placing

46= Sensurround
541 points, 7 votes

recorded for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, 1995
re-recorded as b-side for S-E-X-X-Y, 1996

TOO LOW

my favorite of their straightahead rock band songs. what a great linnell concept: biology vs. culture, where conventional 'nurture' is almost completely bypassed: the mother's selection of earthquake proves the determining factor, the personality shaped in barely explicable ways by a shoddy disaster-movie gimmick. and i'd be differently formed is such an amazing way of phrasing it. and then it all leads, apparently, to the character's present-day fascinations and fantasies - or maybe just his realization that for him, a back-to-the-womb scenario leads not to pre-cultural biological existence but to the SenSurround speaker. he's discovering "new authenticities" a decade early.

i know the power rangers version best and still think it has the right sound/mix. of course after listening to the b-side one (which i find too forced a sugar-rush kind of performance, like "boss of me"), the earlier one sounds sluggishly slow. the "quiet part" break is definitely better as a pet sounds/brazil 66 piece though. man the album would be so much better with this on it somewhere.

Hey, speaking of songs in the top 25, I had this at #16. It's the best version of the sound they were going for on John Henry.

45: I've Got A Match
543 points, 6 votes

on Lincoln LP, 1988
earlier Dial-A-Song version

my #20. possibly an even better irreconcilable-differences lyric than "they'll need a crane," certainly a meaner one, though the fact that it ends with a "collapse" suggests an even more complicated emotional picture. "i'm gonna die if you touch me one more time / well i guess that i'm gonna die no matter what" - wow.

I have always loved this song and at some points would have told you it was my favorite song on Lincoln - in the end I voted it at #19, my fourth highest placing song from the album.

my #24. the most costello-esque song they've done.

re: "Crane" - - - "love people are there, the smell of love is everywhere" is clearly getting at a similar thing to the restaurant where "the other nightmare people [...] i mean, nice people" like to go, but here the cruelty of the circumstance is specifically what a good time everyone else is having at this park or sex party or whatever. the drama in "crane" is more tragic perhaps, as in that one it's clear that they used to love each other and built a life together but it's gradually disintegrating and has to end. in "i've got a match" any trust or affection is long gone and out of the picture, a present-day snapshot of Lad without any sense of the larger story. it reminds me, vaguely, of "gaucho."

"You think that I want to be understood" is one of my favorite TMBG lyrics.

Sensurround was my #2. the bit that goes "Made the fakeness realistic..." is one of my favorite TMBG parts period. still can't believe it didn't make one of their albums.

44: Which Describes How You're Feeling
544 points, 8 votes

demo version on 1985 cassette, b-side on The Statue Got Me High, 1992
re-recorded for Apollo 18, 1992

Can't really justify why I put "Crane" so much higher than "Match." Maybe it's that the payoff line in Match is too on-the-nose for me.

Fucking love the syntactic ambiguity of "Which describes how you're feeling all the feeling all the time"

I've never liked this song at all. Surprised it has so many fans!

I didn't like it much on Apollo 18. The demo version however is great

i love the carnival-calliope-player's organ line on the verse so much. it's in that dial-a-song zone, in between the one-part fragments of "Fingertips" and a conventional song with multiple verses and a bridge and all.

i was into anime at the same time as i was really into TMBG and the idea of something that "doesn't rhyme with the work overseas" made a lot of sense. FAQs full of explanations of how in japan, this is actually a very witty pun, etc.

Really like both versions actually! I think the bass on the Apollo 18 version plays super nice with the keyboards.

I have a soft spot for short songs that are really just there to do a single thing (e.g. I voted for "The Day," which maybe nobody else likes)

everyone's your friend

43: New York City
547 points, 8 votes

original by Cub, 1994
covered on Factory Showroom, 1996

OK I'm gonna be a jerk here and say, happy to see this place so low? I mean, I like it! I voted for it! (In the 70s.) But I feel like the song doesn't particularly match them, anybody could have recorded this version of it, and it's basically corny. (But it's insanely catchy, so much so that I didn't feel I could leave it off entirely.)

anybody could have recorded this version of it

disagree! there are plenty of covers where they do "oh, that sounds like a They Might Be Giants version of that song," and a few where they totally inhabit the song and make their arrangement definitive*. This is definitely one of the latter for me - they transform the fuzzy, cuddly affection of the original into something ringing, triumphant and celebratory. One can presume that they're bringing their deep love of their own city into a song previously looking at it from afar, but it plays without anything specific about the city. It's an anthem about friendship and taking joy in company -- which isn't a major lyrical theme for Them, so it feels remarkable as an outlier, but it sounds like Them seizing the opportunities of the song, not like any other singer doing a version.

somehow never got around to checking out the original before, despite finding TMBG's cover very affecting and sweet as a soft-hearted 16-year-old. but cub's is great! the guts are all there. i think flans just had the idea to make it punchier, making use of empty space in a way that's foreign to the lo-fi guitar wash of this kind of grunge-era twee pop. in particular he makes the chorus jump out more from the verse by withholding the rock-n-roll racket til then. it seems so poised to be a hit (and i'm sure it could have been for a band whose voice the market had bought into - Goldfinger? Veruca Salt? Smash Mouth, a couple years later, for sure). it also feels a lot more forced to my 36-year-old ears, and there's a risk of the "let me show you how i can ROCK!!" performance sort of swallowing the young-love sincerity of the song.

* Istanbul, the cover most transformed in public thought into a song that's only Theirs, is unusually directly close to the original arrangement.

I think TMBG's version is genuinely great, but #43 seems about right. It was #26 on my ballot.

huh, i don't find the "istanbuls" very similar! but we can tackle that when we get there i suppose....

it also feels a lot more forced to my 36-year-old ears, and there's a risk of the "let me show you how i can ROCK!!" performance sort of swallowing the young-love sincerity of the song

to me, the 36-year-old Flansburgh who's spent much of the last decade on the road is expanding the young-love naivety* of the song into a wide-open sincerity about earned, platonic love for people and places

Goldfinger?

but yeah, between this and Boss Of Me, label support for a horn section could have broken them into the ska-punk audience the way Phish fans adopted Ween


*not a put-down!

Jesus, DC, you are only 36? How do you like REM and TMBG as much as I do??? Are you actually 46 but you got new ears when you were 10?

I guess every tween wants prosthetic ears on their real ears.

^ hee

i don't find the "istanbuls" very similar!

the melodic filigrees, the quirks, the stop-start elements that - without hearing the original - sound of a piece with the rest of Flood, are largely in the Four Lads version. just played on a narrower range of instruments!

crazy to assume that the voters itt are such normies that we'll get a chance to talk about it later imo

If I'm to be honest I think one thing I don't like about this song is I've had my lifetime supply of people congratulating themselves for living in New York! I mean, this song is not exactly that, but it's kind of that.

42: No One Knows My Plan
551 points, 8 votes

on John Henry album, 1994
live from the House Of Blues, 1995

crazy to assume that the voters itt are such normies that we'll get a chance to talk about it later imo

proudly voted for istanbul, so i resemble that remark!!!

all-time TMBG lyric: They're like the people chained up in the cave/In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy

if I were voting solely on how often a song gets stuck in my head this would probably be...idk #2

I thought this would be higher. I generally thought (based on 10 years out of date TMBG interneting) that this was the most popular track on "John Henry". I've always found it just OK.

always assumed that was "End of the Tour". this track is definitely one of my favorites live...such a burst of energy

only downside is it probably kept "Lullaby to Nightmares" off the album, which is one of Flansy's better tunes from that era

Wait, actually 15-20 years out of date TMBG interneting. Time flies!

41: Youth Culture Killed My Dog
557 points, 9 votes

on 1985 self-titled cassette
re-recorded for The Pink Album, 1986

"Youth CUL-TCHAH" probably the most punk rock a TMBG vocal ever got

This is my first top-10 to place. Might be the hardest to JUSTIFY on my top 10. If someone said "but isn't this song kind of a dumb trifle," how could I deny it?

Re "No One Knows My Plan," my memory is that this used to be a huge live favorite. (I didn't vote for it but it's one of their most catchy verse melodies, I can't deny that.)

I somehow think of "Meet James Ensor" as the the popular fave off John Henry!

40: Meet James Ensor
558 points, 10 votes

on John Henry album, 1994
acoustic version on Severe Tire Damage recorded for REV 105, 1995
in-studio at WNYC, 2009

you asked for it

always been fascinated by the drums on this track. you almost don't notice them, but when you do....

I totally forgot about this song and definitely should have voted for it. Whoops!

voted for both of these.

youth culture is even more fun if you think of it as the inspiration for John Wick

to me, the 36-year-old Flansburgh who's spent much of the last decade on the road is expanding the young-love naivety* of the song into a wide-open sincerity about earned, platonic love for people and places

the only time I saw them live was in late 2001, shortly after September 11, and iirc they played New York City as their final song and I remember it being very poignant in that context.

holy shit, i never noticed the fluttering drums or whatever that is on "james ensor"!

they opened the second encore in Vancouver last week with New York City, which felt like a tribute to Cub, but I checked the wiki and they play it several times a week

Well, we're all wrong about what's the most popular song on John Henry (presumably). Maybe it will be the track from the album that appears highest on my ballot!

xp Will this be the highest place for John Henry? I guess "Spy" could show? My own highest-rated hasn't been seen but I doubt it'll be any higher than 40.

First two songs to get 10 votes are both from John Henry (Ensor and Subliminal) so maybe that means the album isn't as well-liked as the others but there's more consensus about which songs are the keepers?

I remember looking up James Ensor's work in the library after hearing this, I wonder how many other kids did the same

this all seems appropriate for TMBG:

In James Ensor‘s work, the concept of vanitas, the transitory nature of the earthly existence, often appeared. He even reworked various paintings in order to give them the concept of vanitas. Still more, he fluidly combined the macabre (the skeleton) and the grotesque (the masks).

In the etching, My Portrait in 1960 (1888), Ensor portrays himself in the grave, one hundred years after his birth in 1860, in the company of a spider and a serpent. The first version of the etching My Portrait as a Skeleton (1889) is an exact copy of a photograph taken at his friend Rousseau‘s house in Brussels. In the second version he makes his face a skull, by which he gives the etching a genuine memento mori meaning.

I feel like there could totally have been a TMBG song about being dead called My Portrait in 2060 or similar

Listening (and re-listening) to isolated John Henry highlights while reading the thread is helping to finally crack that nut, as hoped. Nice.

I have 3 songs from John Henry in my top 40 and only one has placed ("I Should Be Allowed to Think") so I'm hopeful.

spoilers: ʎɹuəɥ uɥoɾ ɯoɹɟ əɯoɔ oʇ buos əɹoɯ əuo sı əɹəɥʇ

38= Man It's So Loud In Here
565 points, 9 votes

on Mink Car album, 2001
Hot 2002 remix by The Elegant Too

live on Conan with DJ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of The Elegant Too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEXqs_RGgqs

Did we skip 39??

38's a tie

oh yeah i forgot how backwards counting works

38= Boat Of Car
565 points, 8 votes, 1 #1

on 1985 self-titled cassette
re-recorded for The Pink Album, 1986
instore performance c. 1998
recorded with TMBG's Other Thing horns, 2003

Now this is an interesting juxtaposition

My number one. I kept trying to talk myself into lowering it but I just love it

36= The Bells Are Ringing
571 points, 8 votes

Dial-A-Song c. 1995
on Factory Showroom album, 1996

Gee, "Man, It's So Loud In Here" basically IS the Pet Shop Boys of the same era if heard from down a hallway.

The Pet Shop Boys of the era is Release, though!

36= James K. Polk
571 points, 9 votes

b-side to Istanbul (Not Constantinople), 1990
re-recorded for Factory Showroom, 1996
recorded on wax cylinder at the Edison Museum, 1996

yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B21eVIo8E80

Jesus, DC, you are only 36? How do you like REM and TMBG as much as I do???

haha, well, this thread sort of answers that, i was a precocious nerdy teen and into stuff like this! i got into R.E.M. through probably uh "bittersweet me" and "the wake-up bomb" being on the radio, and quickly backtracked through the catalog with the aid of used CD stores and some yard-sale cassettes that locked me into fables and document and green as i listened to them and mowed the lawn.

tmbg-wise... i knew them originally from the tiny toons episode which went over like gangbusters with everyone i was talking to at age 8, so that maybe primed me to dig a little deeper in the mid-90s. i remember asking an older nerd, on the MOO i hung out on (this would have to be in 96), about this song i'd just heard on the radio, something about walking in the glow of a majestic presence, and them setting me straight. but for whatever reason i think the first album i ended up with was either john henry or for some unknown reason miscellaneous t. i devoured their discography in '97 - got flood for my 16th birthday and then for christmas. such abundance. somewhere in there i got apollo 13 and i remember picking up factory showroom at a Border's books along with, i believe, the last of the nausicaa of the valley of the wind "perfect collection" volumes. it was a heady time. i anxiously anticipated, and was pretty disappointed by, severe tire damage and then the internet albums, which i only heard in pieces, also didn't win me over. so probably my peak "fandom" was when i was 15 through 18 but it's not like i've ever really stopped listening to them.

"no one knows my plan" is such classic linnell. i should have voted it higher. "IN the al-leGORy of the peo-ple-in-the-cave-bythegreekguy" is so fun to sing. this is one of the JH tracks that really makes a case for the horn section. "meet james ensor" also benefits from not being too cluttered and loud and for having a very good hook opening the curtain of each verse. "raise a glass and sit and stare - understand the man" sticks in my mind but the best line is certainly "before there were junk stores - before there was junk." could mean there was no heroin available to ensor but i like reading it as a comment on the historical emergence of the curio as a prerequisite for the curio shop.

you know, if john henry was just the like, ten best tracks on john henry it'd be pretty cool, this one-off side project "for this album they have guitars and horns and they made some songs with those." at least as valid as many guitar bands' later "they're trying on electronica." it's almost an hour long though - nearly their longest - and the lame songs just start to pile up.

"man it's so loud in here" is brilliant pastiche, with gloriously loud and punchy fills from guys who actually knew enough about programming drums to have been consciously not using those sounds the first time around. looked it up on tmbg's wiki and the producer is the bassist and co-songwriter of fountains of wayne. the line from here to "stacy's mom" is not too hard to draw. the lyric is another joke on the failure to communicate in a massively mediated world - not as on-the-nose as "i can hear you" and closer to linnell's sensibility anyway, with people overwhelmed and dumbfounded by external stimuli. no longer able to feel any sublime thrill at the statue getting them high, and without even the creepy divine orders of "the bells are ringing," they're just "excited and confused." as they dance, dependent on the technology even to feel love, they note in passing that they probably had something they would have expressed, but can no longer remember what it was. i've got something to say: "man, it's so loud in here!" the rest of the crowd is also "shouting something at us" but we don't find out what it is. probably "man, it's so loud in here!"

35: Cowtown
592 points, 9 votes

on the 1985 s/t cassette
live version (plus Prince's 1999) c. 1985, released on TMBG Unlimited
re-recorded for Lincoln LP, 1988
covered by Open Mike Eagle in a hotel room, 2016

John Henry Demos album is very good and an interesting listen, mainly for the presence of the arranged brass and woodwind parts even at an early stage. These recordings sound so far on they could even be simply where the well-rehearsed band was immediately pre-production, as opposed to formative sketches. A few moments give a mild glimpse into how they possibly could have fit in with a more Apollo 18-esque world... The album version of Sleeping In The Flowers is the real turning point for me, I do like the song a long but there's something alarmingly heavy about it which at the time seemed very un-TMBG.

XP, re "Polk": So there were four wax cylinder tracks recorded, I read. That's a theme I could get behind for a full album I think.

the outro of Sleeping In The Flowers (the 'tell my boss I'm fired' part and the horn solo) is one of their absolute peaks imo

yep, the other three wax cylinder recordings were all released on Unlimited in 2001. not damaged much by the 128kbps format!

cowtown is good, but it just missed my ballot. it can't help feeling like a let down after ana ng

I was bummed when this came in so close to 33...

34: Number Three
616 points, 8 votes

on the 1985 s/t cassette, reworked for The Pink Album
re-recorded in Greek for Then, 1997
live at the Polish National Home, 2001

Glad to see "Boat of Car" place, one of their best tossed-off songs. Just the name of the song still makes me laugh

"Number Three" at #34 obv too low by 31 places

I really dig the Greek version too - I love the commitment to making it work even though there's too many syllables

"number three" and "cowtown" are both genius, and both very very fun to sing.

"we yearn earnestly for home, but our only home is bone." i mean fuck, that's like some shakespeare level shit about life and it's just tossed off in the middle of a song about a quixotic quest to seek, one supposes, some kind of guru or just an escape from that unfulfilled sequence of life followed by death. a very specifically chosen fantasy mind you, and one which prefigures sensurround and metal-detector in spurning conventional Romantic restoration through nature: the ardor of arboreality is an adventure we have spurned. i'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea.

these guys were NOT appreciated enough in their heyday.

oh i guess it's "we yearn to swim for home." ha, been singing that wrong for twenty years. it's great either way though.

online interpretations suggest i'm totally wrong, instead the arboreal adventure refers to humankind's evolution from tree-dwelling apes, and the upcoming journey to cowtown is either a regression to our still-earlier aquatic state, or a step forward to a utopian future like yellow submarine. i think it might be more like 2001. our only home is bone. our only home is bone.

Number Three is brilliant and 30-odd years later, the idea that these prolific whizkids only had three songs in them is even funnier

early great songwriterly move from flans, concluding with the change from "...and the third one i just made" to "...and this is, number threeeeee." the main sampled hook is also such a cool wonky sound barging in.

Needed to be away from my computer for a spell and I missed three of my all-time favorites, each one top-15 on my ballot. "Cowtown" and "Number Three" possibly the best TMBG songs in the entire ouevre to holler along in the car to.

"Spent my whole life just diggin' up my music's shallow grave for the two songs in me and the third one I just made" -- have birth and death ever been wrapped around each other so tightly in so few words?

if so, it's in another tmbg lyric

The experience and emotions tied to listening to “Number Three” are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax

i didnt vote but i love "Weep Day"

33: It's Not My Birthday
630 points, 8 votes

1987 demo played on WFMU
re-recorded as b-side for They'll Need A Crane, 1989

Lower than I expected!

but there'd be no percentage
and there'd be no proof
and the sound upon the roof is only water
AND the rain falls down without my help,
I'm afraid

seriously gets in my head dozens of times a year, when it's raining, when it's my birthday, when it's not my birthday, when things lunge out at other things.

"so i'm rattling the bars around this drink tank, discreetly / I should pour through the keyhole or evaporate completely." it is so crazy the stuff they marked down as b-sides at this point.

Wow, THIS one is also high up for me (#11) and I had no idea other people liked it, assumed it wouldn't place. "I'm not the only dust my mother raised," so fantastic.

The first song in my top 10 to place!

xpost another great early freewheling play with an already somewhat uncommon figure of speech! it's weird but since you brought up r.e.m., there are certain odd similarities between stipes' lyrics and the johns'. syllable density of course but also stipe's play with idiom (in this case southernism) as an intrigued outsider - something like "up to par and katie bars the kitchen signs but not me in" isn't *utterly* removed from "the yellow roosevelt avenue leaf overturned" and "not the only dust my mother raised." obviously they're worlds apart in other ways. but i can kinda "hear" linnell as a weird alternate-universe r.e.m. vocalist doing stipe's lyrics, at least on the uptempo wordy songs.

32: Minimum WAGE
639 points, 11 votes

on Flood LP, 1990

too high!!! fun one-liner tho. i've had friends who really felt it as a fuck-yeah when they were broke. i can dig the idea of dialing an answering machine, hearing this, and hanging up. refreshing.

one of the first TMBG songs I ever heard - a friend that was into the band played it for me shortly after the Tiny Toons videos became popular. it honestly blew my mind when I was 10, that a song could be so short and only contain one lyric. and we laughed a lot listening to it

Fuck! I forgot to put Sensurround in my vote eventhough it'd been in my initial list (when I emailed you sic, I had to redo the whole thing, drunk, in 15 mins flat and I missed a couple tracks).

So far barely any of mine have even placed hah.

I dare say for most of us that doing it drunk in 15 minutes would produce no less valid results than deliberating over it for weeks, even if they turned out completely different

Ha, yes, very likely. Too damn much to choose from.

Number Three was my #9
It's Not My Birthday was my #8

(there are plenty that your and my ballots shared which haven't made the top 77, Trayce!)

31: Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
645 points, 10 votes

on Flood LP, 1990

I must not have listened to the supposedly 'very familiar' Flood for this exercise, except for the tracks I knew I wanted to include. Like "Letterbox", this one's giving me serious early nineties flashbacks as I've somehow gone without hearing either for an exceedingly long time. This feels inexplicably fresh and unfamiliar, yet utterly familiar at the same time. My tiny brain loves being confused like this.

On the other hand: "Minimum Wage"? TOO LOW!

30: The World's Address
654 points, 10 votes

1987 version (sung by Linnell) played on WFMU
on Lincoln LP, 1988
Joshua Fried remix, 1989

The World’s a dress

Those two throwaway-ish Flood tracks might be a bit high but I like both and voted for them. I love the central conceit of "Minimum Wage" and the instrumental is super catchy too!

someone in a club tonight has stolen my ideas

BTW Throwaway is not an insult in the TMBG context - they write some pretty amazing throwaway and filler songs.

"someone keeps moving my chair" rules. another one my mom got a kick out of, the emphatic address to "mister horrible." the thing that tickles me is "there's some horrible business left for him to attend to." and the opening couple of seconds are just amazing, this monstrous music machine cranking itself into life. doesn't sound like anything else.

i love the world's address so much, i love how they lean into the lounge theme, and how they quickly admit that the conceit of the song is a stretch.

tell them albert einstein and copernicus were wrong

I think I got into this band when I was like 11, around 1997 or so. I would play Magic at the local card shop and the dude who ran it had a 3-disc CD player that was always on shuffle. The 3 CDs were Flood, one of Weird Al's, and a CD of songs from The Simpsons. I didn't know who TMBG was and often mistook them for the other two - "Whistling in the Dark" sounded like it was sung by Principal Skinner, "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" I could swear was Weird Al, cuz he does a lot of songs that sound like that.

lol, that's great. my magic days were just a little earlier, more like late 94 through late 95 i'd guess. got expansion fatigue rapidly. i went to a couple of low-key game days at the comic shop basement but if they played any music it sadly made no impression. mainly i recall the excitement of seeing behind the scenes at the comic shop. aha, so that's what became of the big sculpted venom head!

29: Destination Moon
676 points, 8 votes

on John Henry album, 1994

live on The Jon Stewart Show, 1994, briefly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5xKzO3qEwc

yes! love that this is so high. a great and incredibly catchy narrator-in-denial song, prefiguring "till my head falls off."

that's the last John Henry pick, then? glad it's the highest, but a shame not to see "out of jail" and "aka driver" show up somewhere.

This is really bringing home to me how much more I listen to Factory Showroom than John Henry, because I really was like "wait which one is Destination Moon?" and then when I played it I was like "oh yeah the one with the backwards series of steps to get to the rocket." Good song! But didn't realize it was loved so widely.

I do wonder how John Henry would've fared had it been organized more like a 'normal' TMBG album - 17 songs, 45 minutes. I think it would probably be seen as one of their best.

"Sleeping in the Flowers" a great example of everything the album gets right & wrong - I agree with Paul that it's too weirdly heavy, it's too long, there's a guitar solo which is fine but doesn't really fit. I think all told it's TMBG's longest tune, but if you'd shortened it to like 2:30 it would be an absolute killer. The Johns were clearly a bit eager about having a full band at their disposal.

"Destination Moon" was #9 on my ballot. I've always loved the delusional, hopeful lyrics to this and it's super catchy too! The highest ranking non-placing John Henry song on my ballot is now confirmed to be "Window". N.B. I have an unhealthy affection for this album because it was the first new TMBG album to be released after I started being a fan.

I like to think of My Man as a kind of companion to Destination Moon, where the narrator is only capable of moving in his head rather (My Man seems to be about depression rather than actual physical incapability, but there's still that disconnection between the mind's instructions and the body)

I love the step by step connections thing that show up in a lot of TMBG lyrics, like the steps to get to the moon here or "and at the top of a tree there's a house, and in the house there's a room, and in the room there's a chair and in the chair is you" from The House At The Top Of The Tree, it seems to tie into that thing I mentioned before about being a kid and extending your address to include 'the earth, the solar system' etc. I think that "you're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older, and now your even older" etc comes from the same sort of place as well

I really like the shift from the heavy verses to the jaunty chorus on Sleeping in the Flowers, it reminds me of The Affiliated by XTC/Dukes Of The Stratosphere

not that verses there particularly heavy, but just the shift in style for the chorus

"My Man" is definitely about paralysis

My man won't walk again/In conflict with express instructions given by the brain

Why can't the message be sent?/I guess my man's fallen out with my head

The song seems to me like a sort of muffled protest against the (many) artificial and ridiculous facets of the feminist ideas that have attempted to deny and destroy modern gender roles. So I think the above idea of the "breakfast in bed" line fitting into this is spot on; this action was once a rare reversal of gender roles as the husband made a meal for the wife. Therefore TMBG could be mentioning it simply to evoke this image of altered gender roles.
I would go even further and say that they're mentioning breakfast in bed as a way of saying: "Hey, a man making a meal for a woman isn't so special anymore because we've stupidly destroyed the gender distinctions that made us men and women. You can't treat a woman like a Queen, even for a day, when that woman thinks that men and women should all be treated the same." It's a similar protest to saying "feminists told us to stop opening doors for women; so now even the last shred of Chivalry has been destroyed."

As for the title, I would assume that "Sally Boy" is supposed to compare and contrast with "Candy Bar" somehow, but I can't think how. I would also suggest that, although it's a stretch, "Candy Bar" could be a phallic symbol; but, again, that wouldn't seem to compare/contrast with "Sally Boy" in any meaningful way (unless there's some parallel anatomical reference there that I'm not getting).

-- My sincere appologies if this is an inapropriate forum for expressing my views on this (if anyone feels it is, please feel free to delete this) but I really don't see that we have to subjugate people so that it means something when we're nice to them. How about we just be good to people (i.e. opening doors for them, making breakfast for them, etc.) regardless of their gender. Just my own feelings on this.

I’m sorry to tell you guys I’ve listened to “Sally Boy Candy Bar” and They Might Be Giant Transphobes are C A N C E L L E D

ew where is that from and why am i reading it

The Johns were clearly a bit eager about having a full band at their disposal.

I really wonder what the vibe/dynamic was! I'm sure they were jazzed about the new sonic possibilities, and for the process of recording to be something much less meticulous and/or tedious. I also imagine that, not having really been in "bands" much, that the process of just getting used to that must have been strange. Maybe they let songs go on longer than their previous norm because (a) it was fun to just be playing live and coming around to the chorus again with other musicians and (b) they didn't want to feel like they were 'directing' the band or micromanaging the performance if someone came up with a cool horn solo or whatever. I do think the album's best songs are the ones right around three minutes or less.

but yeah, between this and Boss Of Me, label support for a horn section could have broken them into the ska-punk audience the way Phish fans adopted Ween

still pondering this alternate reality. in fact them getting dropped by elektra and eventually finding their footing with the TV work and childrens' albums may have been a more sustainable life and career path. but very easy to imagine them developing this whole following with the nerdier wing of ska-punk kids. though i guess if Doctor Worm couldn't do it in the era of Reel Big Fish then maybe it just wasn't gonna happen.

not willing enough to wear shorts onstage

In this alternate reality, who would have been TMBG's Ben Carr?

28: Mammal
682 points, 11 votes

on Apollo 18 album, 1992

And no one cares enough about "Mammal" to comment on it. I've never liked it much myself and honestly have always been a big cool on Apollo 18 in general.

another track on the imaginary 1999 wallet-chain-aimed best-of that was released to accompany their Warped Tour afternoon slot:

27: The Statue Got Me High
694 points, 11 votes

single from Apollo 18, 1992:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO5iUDBK7TA

live on Jonathan Ross, backed by Steve Nieve & The Love Band, 1992
live on the Tonight Show without Johnny Carson, 1992

Though I am, as stated above, cool on Apollo 18 generally that doesn't apply to this song. TMBG's best self-consciously 'rocking' song and I do like the lyrics nonsense though they might be. I remember reading a semi-convincing analysis on a TMBG message board c. 2001 that the song is about Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.

"Mammal" is great fun to sing and a brilliantly-curated set of syllables ("main-taining the ver-y high me-tab-o-lis-m rate they have") but hard for me to say much about.

"Statue Got Me High" is another hook-monster with some really striking and memorable turns of phrase "the truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie," "a monument of granite sent a beam into my eye," "my coat contained a furnace where there used to be a guy" - really giving the sense of total transformation, as in some kind of sublime mind-blowing experience or perhaps brainwashing by a cult. That a "statue" could be either a work of art or a religious icon further enriches this ambiguity I think - it's both exciting and terrifying to have your mind totally taken over by some new obsession, artistic or personal or even romantic (there aren't many cues here to read this as a Pygmalionesque tale, but you could). And it's contagious! Your turn to hear the stone, and then your turn to burn.

god what the hell was i doing with my ballot that "statue" was down at 53? that's indefensible.

26: Spiraling Shape
695 points, 10 votes

1992 demo of Rocket Ship, released on TMBG Unlimited
rewritten as Spiraling Shape on the soundtrack of the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, 1996, later on Factory Showroom
live in studio on Studio 360 (audio only)

Surprised to see this so high, never knew it had so many fans. I had it at #61 on my ballot. I like the song my only problem is simply that it is too long.

when I was 13 I thought this was one of the best songs ever written. that chorus was in my head for like, an entire year

great juxtaposition of this and "statue."

don't spennnnnd the rest of your life wondering!

25: Everything Right Is Wrong Again
708 points, 10 votes

1984 demo version as Everything Right Is Wrong
Their debut single on "Wiggle Diskette" flexi-disc, as Everything Right Is Wrong
re-recorded as Everything Right Is Wrong Again for The Pink Album

perfect "first song on first album." and now the song is over now.

the early versions are fascinating, and really bring out the countrified edge that crops up elsewhere on the debut. what's missing is that WHAM WHAM! combo of drum programming and electric guitar, and i'm guessing access to the gadgets or extra recording tracks to create the phasey wobbley effect in the bridge.

and i mean the general busy-ness of the mix. the refrain after the bridge in the final version has this great busy synth harpsichord part going behind it. it's like the gauntlet soundtrack suddenly barged into the studio. pocket symphonies for the MIDI era.

24: Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
743 points, 10 votes

original by The Four Lads, 1953

single from Flood LP, 1990:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsRuurcTTSk

Brownsville Mix, 1990
live version on Severe Tire Damage, 1998
Electronic Istanbul, 2011

I am among the 50% of spoilsports who did not vote for this.

tiny toons 4 lyfe

genius cover selection, a catchy but nearly-forgotten vocal hit from a profoundly square and unloved genre, souped up with a steady and sometimes pounding-and-stuttering rhythm section and some all-new instrumental hooks. the main "oriental" instrumental figure of the original is scrapped or just forgotten - i've read that the johns supposedly did not listen to the original while working out theirs). they make this into a real manic racket. wish i could hear it without picturing the tiny toons animation, wonder what i'd think of it just encountering it as the next track on a new tmbg album.

it's suuuch a tmbg song that it's kind of remarkable that they didn't write it. maybe there was some sort of temporal lapse caused by a statue with laser eyes that sent one of the johns back in time to workshop some quirky ideas with vocal groups in the 50s

yea count me in the "couldn't believe this was a cover" crowd

I still like it but kinda wish they'd drop this and "Particle Man" from their set list

Greg also didn't vote for the song that beat Istanbul

23: Narrow Your Eyes
751 points, 11 votes

on Apollo 18, 1992

Hey that's not true I had it at #43.

I think this was my #3. IMO this is an even more heartwrenching breakup song than "Match" or "Crane". the "we'll race to the bottom of a glass" line is so good.

whoops! (#44). I must have not clicked into the sheet before searching

by far my favorite track on Apollo 18--my #9

The beginning part of the chorus is one of my all time favorite TMBG parts, I just think it falls a tiny bit flat.

surprised to see it this high - i put it on my ballot but mainly for the "race to the bottom of a glass" part. solid little song, though.

IMO this is an even more heartwrenching breakup song than "Match" or "Crane". the "we'll race to the bottom of a glass" line is so good.

Seconded.

have to say, as the threadstarter for one of the only dedicated general TMBG threads I'm a little surprised at the level of enthusiasm here both for the band in general and for their post-Flood output, which I never gave much of a second thought to

was tempted to make the next one my #1, just because 2018

22: Your Racist Friend
772 points, 10 votes

on Flood LP, 1990
Sampla-Delic Remix by Super DJ Dmitry & Jungle DJ Towa Tei, 1990

live on Letterman 1990, backed by Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4_COOh4VXw

grade 5, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Pn3oTZD4

Richard Spencer getting punched, 2017

"Your Racist Friend" is not that good. "If anything was broken it surely could be mended" possibly the hackiest rhyme-dictionary rhyme they ever wrote. Glad I got that off my chest!

"Istanbul," on the other hand -- I mean, I'm tired of it too, to an extent, but I'm pretty surprised ANYONE didn't vote for it. Their "Yellow Submarine."

And I love the way they used to do it live where one John would just declaim "NOOOOOOOOOO. YOU CAN'T GO. BACK."

heard a recent interview with Linnell yesterday where he said he was taken aback by how dumb and basic and obvious Your Racist Friend was when Flans wrote it

(and has subsequently learnt that it was not obvious, and was worth being v direct)

Real comments on Youtube about Your Racist Friend

KyraKyraMyra

This has never felt more relevant.

Caifeng Mae

KyraKyraMyra I'm here for that

Scott Davis

Ha! I just went here to say the same thing... 11 months later, it's still getting worse!

Souven Ir

Scott Davis Well it's on the way out. Conservatism is on the rise and the racists beating people in the streets are actually getting arrested for it now.
Trump is turning it all around and he's still got 6 more years!

Lyrically, sure it’s a bit on the nose, but it’s heart is in the right place. Musically it’s one of Flans’s best tunes, imo

yeah i voted for this for the heaviness of the arrangement. the lyrics are unsubtle, but why does everything have to be so subtle all the time

if nothing else I do like the Seinfeld bass on this one

although I guess it probably wasn't called that then

Jonathan Wolff failed to respond to the

21: Rhythm Section Want Ad
784 points, 10 votes

on The Pink Album, 1986

First from my top 10! I can’t explain why exactly I like the so much. It just somehow captures the freedom and joy and confusion of that first record so perfectly. Laugh hard, it’s a long way to the bank.

one fun (and probably unintentional) thing about this tune is how it ends the album on "...and here's the reason why", which on CD would often loop back to the first track

definitely one of my favorites from the first LP, there's something really incredible about these breakneck pop songs that almost have this Zolo feel to them. plus Modest Mouse stole a line from this - Issac Brock being a fan of this album is pretty amusing to me

(googles)

bluetooth earphones feel?

First from my top 10!

Three of my top five have already shown up.

“Confusion” up there was meant to be “concision”

last call to place your bets on what has a chance of placing top 20

Call me crazy but I think “Ana No” might show up somewhere

Ana Ng screw you autocorrect for messing up my joke

Sorry I don’t know why I said that, looked at my ballot and Cowtown and Youth Culture Killed My Dog also top 10 for me. So this is.... number three

None of my top 5 has shown up but I’m 99% sure they are all in the top 20

what are the odds on this one making it

20: Snowball In Hell
797 points, 11 votes

on Lincoln LP, 1988

I love the spoken word interlude in this song so much

You have no idea how often I said “Not back on it, Joe — still on it” in college.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxEGmjnt4Wo

Ps back to the Laurie Anderson comparison I see “avalanche or roadblock” here as analogous to LA’s “pineapple o knife”

birdhouse will be #1 surely, with ana ng and she's an angel also in the top ten. beyond that god only knows.

i didn't rate "your racist friend" as high as i ought to, b/c of the obviousness, but "i know politics bore you, but i feel like a hypocrite talking to you" is pretty relevant/otm.

"rhythm section want ad" is so giddy and funny. i love the NO NO NO NO backing vocals chomping away behind "do you sing like olive oyl on purpose? you guys must be into the eurythmics!" great lyrics throughout as usual. hats off to the use of HATS....as megaphones.

the fast part still totally throws me for singing along, after all these years

If it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointments

My number 3

The accordion riff is killer, incredible melody, and lots of fun turns of phrase

“Money-I-owe, money I-ay” still makes me chuckle

Ooooh, two of my selections in a row. Maybe the top twenty will reveal me to be Mr Consensus after a fairly quiet start.

19: I Palindrome I
806 points, 12 votes

on Apollo 18, 1992

live on Letterman 1992, backed by Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DAnHlOLAn0

This has been an interesting poll so far, the order of songs is more or less unpredictable to me. I voted nearly 100 songs, so I voted for most everything that has showed up, but seeing "Narrow Your Eyes" this high threw me. Always thought that was one of the weaker Apollo 18 songs, I should go back and relisten. "Istanbul" probably should have been on my ballot due to how much I used to like it, but it's the rare TMBG song I've gotten sick of. It might be the only song they've played at every show I've been to (7 or 8 times by now)

"I Palindrome I" was my number 2, its basically the quintessential TMBG song. Littered with hooks and varied drum patterns, lyrics that could easily have been lazy novelty but end up being more open in meaning. It's still a little weird to hear them say "son of a bitch" on a song

The song at the very bottom of my ballot. I admire it, rarely return to it

another amazing little high-concept story married to a formalist game. the reflections and repetitions of palindromes stand in for the repeated sins of the generations. "dad palindrome dad, i palindrome i, and i am a SNAKE HEAD eating the head on the opposite side." a song where once it starts up in my head every single line is going to come rolling forward.

Apropos of nothing, I realize I've probably voted for every song with a horn section.

What musician has been the closest in marrying Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs?

Solange?

Narrow Your Eyes is my all-time favourite Flans song. When I first saw them in 2001, the balcony burst into a singalong of it before they came on.

18: Fingertips
865 points, 11 votes

intended as 21 miniatures to appear in CD shuffle play on 1992's Apollo 18, mispressed as a single track outside north America, learnt & performed live as a medley in C21st
live at the Polish National Home, 2001
what if John and John were one nerd and all the Fingertips were melodies from Beatles songs?

WHAT'S THAT BLUE THING

DO ING HERE

figured this'd be higher! definitely greater than the sum of its parts.

have only done the actual shuffle listen a few times (tho ballot playlist has changed that in the last week) so it's mostly burned into my brain as the original pressed sequence. "everything is catching" is like the best curtain-raiser and i love the "yes!" backing vocals. other faves include "somethin' grabbed ahold of my hand" and "come on and wreck my car." good outlet for flans's interest in micro-tributes to micro-genres. on that last it struck me today that their "concrete and clay" cover, rudimentary as it is, maybe says the most about the kind of band flans would have loved to be in, if he'd been born at the right time.

Much much much too low!!

i wonder how many of these were written for the occasion, or whether any/most of them were fragments they'd had for ages which didn't even have quite enough to them to make for dial-a-song test runs. it's a nice exercise in how-much-do-you-really-need since you can sort of imagine the whole rest of the song for most of them. paul mccartney would scatter a couple of these per album and call them "link" tracks to suggest it was all intentional, or weld them together to form medleys with sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing results. this approach is fun tho, and of course one has to love the idea of them discovering the Shuffle button and wondering why nobody was doing anything interesting with it. an impulse from the same minds that suggested a HyperCard stack as the appropriate venue for bonus material surrounding the next album.

paul mccartney would scatter a couple of these per album

DC did you check that last link

i think we're all missing the most important question, about what that blue thing is doing here

I can't explain the intensity of joy that I felt when I discovered Fingertips

Fingertips was my #5. I thought it was a lock for top 10.

17: Till My Head Falls Off
898 points, 11 votes, 2 #1s

on Factory Showroom, 1996

live on Recovery in 1996, possibly ripped from me replaying it on TV in 2007 or 08 (Graham Maby on bass):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKx_vybLjNo

live Severe Tire Damage version, 1998

always loved how Fingertrips resembled those commercials where the tracklist would scroll from bottom to top and you'd hear 10-second samples of the songs in yellow. I don't know if those were around in '92 but by the time I got into TMBG they were pretty much ubiquitous.

yes otm, that's exactly what i think of

I love the melody and lyrics to this song, and I voted it at around this point (#19). I do think it could stand to be about a minute shorter though.

those commercials HAD to have been on their mind as a sort of parallel reading to the "shuffle" listening experience.

and wow that little youtube beatles fingertips performance.... very cute.

so cool to see "till my head falls off" this high. stuck in my head every time i'm writing/revising a lecture for class. this is stunningly good:

clearing my throat and gripping the lectern, i
smile and face my audience, clearing his
throat and smiling with his hands on the bathroom
sink

like basically returning to the "son, i am able, she said" bit of "i palindrome i" but not a literal palindrome, and now accomplishing a musical camera move, swinging around to reveal the reality in the reflection of this poor guy completely falling to pieces. see also "the broken figure silhouetted on the wall" - he never outright recognizes these people as himself. it's obviously about dementia as much as any stock kind of paranoid mania and i think there's a sympathy for the protagonist as much as in "destination moon," the guy really wants to maintain his dignity and the intellectual powers that he knows are slipping away tho he can't state it, it comes out between the lines. ("destination moon"'s sympathies in turn are for the desire for a grand and fantastic end versus the shabby hospital reality of death - basically albert finney's finale in Big Fish.)

16: Whistling In The Dark
902 points, 13 votes

on Flood LP, 1990

live on Post-Modern MTV, 1989:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWCA7xErX08

lol "now here's tin machine with under the god"

god alone knows what the MTV viewership, clicking in halfway through, would have made of that

"nerds"

15: Particle Man
930 points, 12 votes, 1 #1

banjo demo c. 1989
on Flood LP, 1990
Live At Mountain Stage c. 1993
recorded with TMBG's Other Thing, 2003
live with stylophone on The Screen Savers c. 2003

hard to even say much, so long-established in the brain. pretty sure i learned all the words just from tiny toons reruns. "who came up with Person Man?" is still hilarious to me.

(and, not to impugn your overall very excellent versions links, but you missed the schoolchildren performance released on then...)

My #1!

With four of my top five already gone, I suppose I'm not Mr. Consensus.

(Consensus man, consensus man, doing the things that everyone can...)

Much as with Istanbul above, I am one of the few spoilsports who did not vote for this. I song I have no interest in hearing ever again.

my top 5 and two others in my top 20 have still not showed, but i think all or almost all would be consensus favorites.... i am probably a pretty boring tmbg fan!

(and, not to impugn your overall very excellent versions links, but you missed the schoolchildren performance released on then...)

Then is not on the ParticleMen channel, and I liked the schoolchildren doing Your Racist Friend as a substitute

lives his life in a garbage can

7 of my top ten are yet to place, but they will. and the other three already have lol. i think i have doc c beat on the boring tmbg fan front

I definitely have some top 20 songs that won't appear at this point, but I am still quite confident that my whole top 5 will appear (#5 already has: "Fingertips")

I'm probably a pretty boring TMBG fan circa early 1994. Then I liked John Henry more than it seems most people did.

my top 5 and two others in my top 20 have still not showed

yikes, glad you said this: I was going to note that you have more than two in the lower top 20, but discovered that I'd missed one discrepancy when fixing everyone's spelling and punctuation for tallying. Let's wind the clock back to yesterday:

27a: I've Got a Match
688 points, 9 votes

Dial-A-Song c. 1987
on Lincoln LP, 1988

(three people voted for I've Got A Match, six people voted for I’ve Got A Match)

(it would have been higher overall if Shakey hadn't skipped listing #2 to #8 on his ballot, too)

Was away from my desk, missed some highlights!

SUPER PSYCHED to see "Till My Head Falls Off" this high. Looking back, I see I placed it #30 -- why so low? One of my very favorite of the rockers. "And when I lean my head against the frosted shower stall / I see stuff through the glass that I don't recognize at all" one of their most perfectly tuned lines. "I'm not done talking" in some weird way counterpoint to "And now this song is over now." Great.

Yes, Particle Man is one of the most overexposed songs in their catalog. But it's also maybe the most perfect song they ever did? I mean, there's not much to it. But every single thing in it has to be there. And the number of changes they ring on the very small set of basic elements is amazing.

Five of my top 10 have placed, 2 more definitely will, doesn't seem inconceivable that all 10 will.

Agreed, eephus. I think I have a higher tolerance for overexposure than most people, so that didn't bother me when putting together my ballot.

i love the weird, unannotated moral universe or mythology "particle man" presents. there are four archetypes. triangle man hates and defeats two of the others. universe man is "usually" kind to, we assume, all of them, but also seems to be an arbiter of time/fate (i remember one fan interp that held that his "watch" represented nuclear war). of triangle's two foes, particle seems to have it better than person, but we don't really know because particle man is defined mainly by unknowability. it's like a garbled, broken version of rock-paper-scissors with all these other signifiers floating unexplained, a puzzle with no answer, a fable from another dimension that we can't comprehend because none of the allegorical figures scan for us. and just goofy enough that a warner bros cartoon makes perfect sense: coyote trying to kill roadrunner seems about as fundamental and just-so-story as "triangle man hates person man."

When he's underwater does he get wet?
Or does the water get him instead?

^^ fundamental philosophical question right there

that opening line is an all-timer: "There were 87 Advil in the bottle, now there's 30 left/I ate 47 so what happened to the other 10?"

I remember someone suggesting that this might be (part of) the inspiration for Particle Man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

i remember that take too! it's a good one... one, two, three dimensions, with universe man perhaps encompassing all?

good lord too low for I've Got A Match

most straightforward/plausible explanation for "particle man" imo is that they were doing a sort of dream-logic surrealist version of a kids' tv show theme a la "spider-man," iow what would this sound like if the person in charge of describing this fight-packed super show's empty-vessel characters kept wandering off onto tangents prompted by the material (what's he like, is he a dot, who came up with this?). a bit like the orson welles "frozen peas" tape, but gentler and more philosophical.

(in this light, universe man's watch is just some dumb action accessory they want to sell toys of, so that's definitely in the script)

14: Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon
934 points, 12 votes

b-side to They'll Need A Crane, 1989

Should have been top 10! I think this may be my favorite TMBG song musically. I only voted it at #3 due to lyrics but still it's totally insane that they threw this off as a B-side.

13: Doctor Worm
971 points, 12 votes, 1 #1

single, 1998:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbmtni4q2_o

Dial-A-Song with QuickCam video, 1997
live on Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular c. 1999
Ka-Blam! video with worm by Kaz, 1999

14: Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon
934 points, 12 votes

WOW. Of the ones in my top 10, this was one of two I kind of thought wasn't gonna place. One thing I'm learning from this poll is that maybe the B-sides / deep cuts I think of myself as idiosyncratically loving are in fact the same ones everyone loves.

It was one of my top 5 that I was 99% sure was going to place!

Meanwhile I’m surprised to see ‘Doctor Worm’ so high but I got no beef with it

12: Kiss Me, Son Of God
994 points, 13 votes, 2 #1s

live on WFMU, 1987
b-side on Hotel Detective EP, 1988 (one voter specified this version)
re-recorded with The Ordinaires backing for Lincoln LP, 1988
covered by Frank Bennett, 1998

I must have been a frightfully serious young adult by the time Dr Worm was released as I think its perceived childishness (not sure how I gauged this) extinguished my residual enthusiasm for TMBG, after a decade. It didn't help that JJJ put it on high rotation. Today I'm totally digging the horns and the "tell me if you think I'm getting better..." section.

XP: yay for #12!

"Nightgown" was my #1, "Doctor Worm" my #15, and I'm on my way out the door so I'll have to save my gushing for later...

Spotify's recommended playlist additions are amusing. Their algorithm must have very nearly nailed the top 10!

Kiss Me, Son Of God was my number one—was always a favorite, mainly for the quartet arrangement, but given current events, I really couldn’t pick anything else

it came WAY up from where I might have had it otherwise due to current events

11: Twisting
1014 points, 14 votes

on Flood LP, 1990
Dial-A-Song c. 1989, with unfinished lyrics

Did others also seek out the Young Fresh Fellows and dBs as a result of "Twisting"?

Yep. And as I mentioned in the other thread "XTC vs Adam Ant" prompted me to check out those two bands

"Kiss Me Son of God" didn't make my ballot but the lyrics are great

OTOH, I didn't know the Replacements were an actual band for years!

Re: YFF and dB's: Speaking personally, no.

10: Dead
1026 points, 12 votes

on Flood LP, 1990
covered by Steve Burns c. 2006

What the hell, I forgot to vote for "Twisting"!!! But now I'm glad I did because as much as I like it, I like "Dead" even better and I prefer this order....!

are ppl around for a power through the top ten, or should we hold off?

I'm around

And I'm pretty busy tomorrow so I vote yes

I guess most of America's carving pumpkins and Australia's at the beach

Oh god "Dead" speaks close to me and pops into my head at appropriate times

"doctor worm" and "nightgown" is actually a fun pairing in a way - linnell's most sympathetic "deluded narrator" song, and his giddiest new-love song. "doctor worm" today strikes me as a kind of answer song to "deacon blues" - another guy of limited talent, musical aspirations, and the hope that someday somebody else besides him will call him by his stage name. for fagen/becker this is a sneering satire, partially of themselves, with notes of sympathy creeping around the edges of the takedown. doctor worm's heart is on his sleeve, the johns root for him, and he's having fun even in his worm's-life obscurity: he likes to play the drums. and he has a friend with him. a portrait of the johns, ten or twelve years earlier, making a racket in their apartment for themselves and for whatever randos might call their answering machine. good morning, how are you, you've reached dial-a-song.

"nightgown of the sullen moon" is still as fresh and sweet and mindblowing as it was the first time i heard it. what a perfect evocation of the heart-exploding rush of love. beautifully rendered in the second person so that as we age we can relate as much to the kind singer as we once did to the starry-eyed protagonist (i believe it was tom ewing who made this observation about "dancing queen" and it obtains here, though without the brush of sadness or envy). even more than "she's an angel," when i hear this i rememeber what it *felt* like to be 16 and hear this song and believe in these feelings.

and that bouyant, insistent but bright and bouncy backing track lifting everything forward, the phasing/flanging effect lending a shimmery wobble to the computerized, jittery ride on the clouds. i've listened to it four times in a row writing this and it doesn't get old.

like the police's great "moon" song, and mrs. dalloway's breathless repetition to herself "she is under his roof!", it's set in the time before and after time spent with the person of one's dreams. you fall in the door, the moonlight leans in through the windows, you are giddy and no one else with their drug-trip metaphors could understand. your head is on the moon. it's not necessary to breathe. forever is a long time. your head is on the moon.

and i selfishly vote for slow, meandering trip through the top ten - gonna be busy with halloween stuff today n tomorrow. but it's always best decided by what's most fun for the poll runner cause you're putting in the work!

To ask a naive question, what is the origin of "Doctor Worm" being such a canonical TMBG track? Is it just because they always play it in concert? It doesn't appear on a proper album ever, right?

this poll shows that being on a studio album with a label's promo budget isn't a requirement for canonicity!

I dare say it's just been a perennial because it bangs. It was a commercial single in the UK, and I assume it was a "college radio" "airplay hit" in America? The listeners of the national youth radio network in Australia voted it the 13th best song of 1998, though it took them three years to tour afterwards.

(I'll hold off on the top nine until Monday US time.)

I don't think "Dr. Worm" is popular because they play it a lot - the band probably noticed that people responded well and starting playing it a lot and it's a reinforcing cycle. It's one of their best live songs, certainly. They are a band as defined by their live shows as their albums, if not more, so any song has the chance to become popular with fans in that way. "Why Does the Sun Shine?" is another of these

I didn't have satellite tv at this point, but I was informed from a friend that Dr Worm got a degree of traction in the UK/Europe upon release, even if it never became a 'proper' hit. It deserved to be hit #2 moreso than Boss Of Me by some margin.

"Why Does the Sun Shine?" is another of these

which they played live for twenty-two years before putting it on a “proper album”. There’s still hope for Doctor Worm!

Glad I wasnt the only one who voted "til my head falls off" at #1 :)

Its basically "lie still little bottle" on steroids!

Dr Worm video was showing at MOMA in S.F. when I was there like 15 years ago. Still can't work out why that was but nevertheless it's a cool and charming video. None of my children ever responded to the actual TMBG children's albums but both love Dr Worm after watching it on youtube.

Well this is a coincidence: I listened to Flood for the first time this week and now I discover TMBG is being polled on ILM! Anyways, love the album, glad to see it's doing well here, and I'm hoping We Want a Rock places before the poll ends

Also hoping Ana Ng is #1 because that song is perfect

Just realised now I didnt think to include "youre on fire" which isone of the only newer singles I know.

Though I did watch that odd little one with Nick Offerman being voodoo doll stabbed recently, it was... interesting.

Actually, I voted for "We Want A Rock", come to think of it. There are way more than 9 more tracks I'd have guessed would rank higher than 78th. Only maybe six of them feel like certain top ten material to me. (Though I certainly don't have my finger on the pulse of fan sentiment.)

it occurs to me now that the show I saw last week did not include "Ana Ng" "Don't Let's Start" OR "Istanbul"

holy shit, wait ... yes, they did play "Istanbul" (I forgot) and apparently "Don't Let's Start" which I don't remember at all. i must've dozed through it? (i was very, very, very tired and, yes, dozed off a couple times in the second set.)

^ not dancing hard enough

Just realised now I didnt think to include "youre on fire" which isone of the only newer singles I know.

don't worry, it came out 11 years after this poll

9: Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head
1132 points, 15 votes, 1 #1

on the 1985 cassette as (Put Your Hand Inside The) Puppet Head - replaced on the 1993 reissue

re-recorded for The Pink Album, 1986 - not a single, but their first video, filmed by Adam Bernstein of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Bored To Death, Baby Got Back, Beastie Boys, Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos and B-52s fame. Also won an Emmy for 30 Rock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb4Lcw3rtsE

an earlier (Put Your Hand Inside The) demo is in the first 2 minutes here

What a melody line on this song

if the puh puh puppet HEAD
was only buh buh busted IN

Puppet Head was my #2, and jumped way up as I was considering songs. Is it weird that it sort of reminds me of Bad Brains? Imagine HR screaming this at you, it sort of works.

Pretty big points jump between #10 and #9 and 15/20 voters too. I wonder if the canonical favorites will have the full 20 votes, hard to imagine anyone not voting for some of the songs yet to come.

8: Purple Toupee
1204 points, 16 votes

abandoned single from Lincoln LP, 1988. Their fifth Adam Bernstein video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EuYh3KFJwA

I was the guy who voted Puppet Head #1. At the end of the day it was just about which song I've played the most, and iTunes says its this one. Also I think "the check's in the mail, and I'll see you in church, and don't you ever change" is an all-time great pop moment

purple toupee rules, surprised to see it so high but not complaining. one of the better boomer satires in capturing a dull-witted bystander who actually didn't grasp anything at all that was happening and whose attempt at a generational anthem ends up being garbled nonsense about toupees. "we're on some kind of mission" is as anthemic as he can muster. and another beautifully-assembled musical performance, so so precise and aggressive. that's all i can think of but i'm sure there's something else.

nice

"heard about some lady named Selma and some blacks"

great song

Really like Purple Toupee but didn't really imagine it getting to top 10. Had it around the middle of my ballot but I hadn't been thinking about the amazing transition into the "We're on some kind of mission" ending and I should have placed it higher.

7: Where Your Eyes Don't Go
1205 points, 17 votes

on Lincoln LP, 1988
live on MTV c. 1989

an unassailable masterpiece, 1 spot too low according to my ballot.

possibly the cleverest chord progression in a discography overstuffed with those

6: We Want A Rock
1282 points, 16 votes, 1 #1

from Flood LP, 1990

Yesssss

WYEDG is one of my "had no idea this was so widely-agreed-upon-as-classic" tracks. it's great obv.

omg I lovvvvve "we want a rock."

top 5 spec:

5. hotel detective
4. don't let's start
3. wildcard album track i never thought would place this high
2. ana ng
1. birdhouse in your soul

oh wait she's an angel will be #3

wow very surprised we want a rock is so high. i guess everybody really does want prosthetic foreheads on their real heads.

has They'll Need A Crane placed yet? I would have also expected Hearing Aid, Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love, You'll Miss Me and a few others to be somewhere in the top 77 before we started (unless some of these have placed and I missed them?)

5. hotel detective

which one?

i hope "stand on your own head" makes it

oh shit, crane totally a lock. so one of mine is DOA? or did one place and i missed it? i def don't need to see hotel detective (the beloved tmbg classic not the forgotten b-side) place anywhere but it'd be WEIRD for it to not even make top 77.

outside of the top 5 I find the rest of these results totally baffling tbh

just wait til it turns out the top five is actually "spy," "absolutely bill's mood," "space suit," "toddler hiway" and at #1, "birds fly."

I remember long ago mentioning to someone I had this CD and they said "you have to burn me a copy, I need to get that 'everyone wants a rock to wind the piece of string around' song, it's been stuck in my head for years"

Come on guys it's 100% Ana Ng, She's an Angel, They'll Need a Crane, Birdhouse in Your Soul, Don't Let's Start, in some order.

duh

#6 through #10 is entirely populated by tracks I never would have predicted in top 10 (except maybe "Puppet Head") but I'm reasonably happy with all of them. They were all on my ballot except "Dead", though none higher than #34 ("Purple Toupee"). "Where Your Eyes Don't Go" I rated way too low, in retrospect.

Each of the Hotel Detectives got the exact same number of points from the exact same number of votes.

(in a three-way tie with Hope That I Get Old Before I Die!)

And, sure, it's a predictable top 5, but that's because they all genuinely deserve it.

otm

I'm confused because Ana Ng, Angel, Hotel Detective, Crane, Birdhouse, and DLS are all "impossible to imagine not placing" candidates for me but I guess I'm most likely to be wrong about "Hotel Detective"? I assumed "We Want a Rock," my #7 and my #2 on Flood (to "Dead") was out of it for this very reason.

I guess I'm most likely to be wrong about "Hotel Detective"?

which one?

I would have also expected Hearing Aid, Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love, You'll Miss Me and a few others to be somewhere in the top 77 before we started (unless some of these have placed and I missed them?)

even if you had voted three times and put each of these at #1, none of them would have made it to the top 77 (Hearing Aid would have been #78. Only two people voted for You'll Miss Me.)

"You'll Miss Me" is absolute garbage, don't @ me.

Ana Ng, She's an Angel, They'll Need a Crane, Birdhouse in Your Soul, Don't Let's Start

Crane is a good song, but it's a distant fifth in this group. I'd put Palindrome, Statue or Spiralling Shape in there ahead of it.

For me, two of these five tower far above the other three, but I will wait until the results are out to reveal whether you guys picked the right ones.

which one?

From the pink album. Pretty shocked it didn't place. One thing that's going on, I think, is that what's great about it is really not as specifically TMBG as what's great about She's an Angel or Don't Let's Start. If you push me I can sort of imagine Was (Not Was) recording it (to re-up a comparison I think Doc Casino made somewhere upthread.)

soref, sapphires is gonna be my highest ranking song not to place. i think it's gorgeous, but i understand if it's a bit less lyrical or manic than what people want or expect from tmbg

I think if you had asked me to guess what would be top 5 I'd have been close to right and if you'd asked me to guess 6-10 I would have been utterly wrong. (e.g. I certainly would have put "Istanbul" and "Particle Man" in 6-10.)

I don't know what I'm going to do for display names after today, but I've been saving this one for two months until we hit the top 5

just wait til it turns out the top five is actually "spy," "absolutely bill's mood," "space suit," "toddler hiway" and at #1, "birds fly."

I actually really dig all of these except maybe "spy" and voted for none of them which just shows you how damn deep the catalog is

(fact check: no wait, in fact "absolutely bill's mood" and "space suit" were the very last two on my ballot!)

5: She's An Angel
1426 points, 17 votes, 2 #1s

from The Pink Album, 1986
live version on Live!! New York City 10/14/94 and Severe Tire Damage

^ TOO LOW

This was my #1. This has been my favorite TMBG song, and arguably my favorite any song, for 20+ years now.

"they don't happen at ah-ah-all, in fact" one of the sweetest saddest lines i've ever encountered anywhere

Sweet point jump too.

"The secretary says he's on another line, can I hold for a long, long time" is a lyrical precursor to "Whistling In the Dark" and "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" I realize now

just realized 9 of the top 10 are sung by Linnell

whoever above said that "puppet head" is a spectacular melody, true but i feel that twice as much about "she's an angel"

yeah if you plunk the melody for she's an angel on the piano, it sounds like Bach

don't really have the musical vocabulary to describe this but the way the words are placed not where you'd expect them vis-a-vis the beat on "why did they send her over anyone else how should i react these things happen" is also insanely A+, in conclusion, i placed this too low

p sure i first saw "Puppet Head" video when they were on The Joe Franklin Show

4: They'll Need A Crane
1524 points, 18 votes

1989 single from Lincoln LP, 1988. Their sixth Adam Bernstein video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl7f6T4L2IA

making their network TV on Letterman 1989, backed by Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band:

John Linnell is the greatest songwriter of the past 40 years.

And this was my #2. My favorite lyrics of any TMBG song and the bridge is my favorite TMBG moment.

wow at point jump. this one is below the rest for me because of "where all the other nighmare people like to go, i mean nice people" gag -- it just feels too strained to me, unlike so many of their little verbal moves which just fall so naturally into place, like, well, "call off the wedding band, nobody wants to hear that one again, that one again," which is about as perfect as they get, in conclusion "they'll need a crane" is a land of contrasts and out of the top 4 we correctly chose which one should be #4

3: Birdhouse In Your Soul
1537 points, 17 votes, 1 #1

single from Flood, 1990. their seventh Adam Bernstein joint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Am-BF7ObCI

early Dial-A-Song version, 1989

live on The Tonight Show 1990, backed by the big band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zkRjrGmTl4

"You'll Miss Me" is absolute garbage, don't @ me.

I don't like it either but the version that appeared on their first flexidisc single is really intriguing and weird. Flans sings it like he's either trying to be "cool" or not wake the neighbors. Way different than the version that wound up on Lincoln

just realized 9 of the top 10 are sung by Linnell

"Puppet Head" was written by him, though Flans wrote the lyrics. Was always puzzled how Flansburgh could've written a song like that. I like him a lot, but man Linnell is just in a league of his own

This song always makes me ask: how can I sing like Linnell?

Linnell is just in a league of his own

one of my minor disappointments with this poll is that while lots of my personal faves turn out to be really popular, the majestic genius of "State Songs" remains underappreciated

crane at 18 votes, pretty undeniable. what can even be said about either it or "angel." goddamn what amazing songs, about such distant ends of the love/relationship experience.

birdhouse is TOO LOW. surely one of the greatest singles of 1989 by anybody in any genre. so startling and so affecting even on the thousandth listen. the unrequited decency of a night light "who watches over you," which could SO easily tip into pathetic nice-guy-ism. if there's any flaw it's the throwaway quality of the "longines symphonette" line which doesn't really contribute anything and points away to an obscure reference for no real reason. but everything else is perfect.

this one is below the rest for me because of "where all the other nighmare people like to go, i mean nice people" gag -- it just feels too strained to me, unlike so many of their little verbal moves which just fall so naturally into place

I like the whole 'don't call me at work again oh no the boss still hates me' bit, it's perfect imo

nightmare people kind of reminds me of the ugliness men from Someone Keeps Moving My Chair

for me the big hook in Birdhouse is that "who WATCHES OVER YOU" in the chorus, it fits so well despite being kind of out of place. like it was beamed in from another song.

as for "She's an Angel"...its probably the one I've been obsessed with for the longest time. the way it explodes from this intentionally droll verse to this profound and beautiful chorus (both of them, in fact) is really something. sadly they have never once played it when I've seen them, I always wondered how Linnell manages to sing it without running out of air.

i said where your eyes don't go has the cleverest chord progression, but you know, it's probably birdhouse. how both "i'm your only friend" section are in different keys from each other and different keys from the rest of the song but resolve in the same way, but the first time it goes into the chorus and the second time it goes into the verse. it's genius. my #4.

crane was my#2--just so crushingly sad, yet so fun to sing.

honestly my favorite part of "birdhouse" isn't a lyric at all, it's the insistent little keyboard line that transits from the opening "i'm your only friend" to the main part of the song, right as the drums come in.

for me the big hook in Birdhouse is that "who WATCHES OVER YOU" in the chorus, it fits so well despite being kind of out of place. like it was beamed in from another song.

haha yeah the first dozen or so times i heard the song, i thought the line ended with a question mark ("WHO WATCHES OVER YOU???").

I'm honestly a little surprised that 3 people didn't vote for Birdhouse at all. I'm a bit sick of it myself, and I consider it clearly the weakest of these 5 consensus top songs but not voting for it at all just seems wrong.

i guess overexposure is why i didn't vote for birdhouse even higher, it really is a tiny, tight little rube goldberg machine of hooks, both lyrical and instrumental

I wonder if the canonical favorites will have the full 20 votes, hard to imagine anyone not voting for some of the songs yet to come.

o rly

2: Don't Let's Start
1677 points, 19 votes

1987 single remixed from The Pink Album; their second Adam Bernstein collab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJQnZZ-Wmao

early, short version from the 1985 cassette, later unedited on Then

live on MTV 1988, following Shoehorn With Teeth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxniOZvNDUU

1: Ana Ng
1786 points, 20 votes, 3 #1s

single from Lincoln LP 1988; their fourth Adam Bernstein vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Mw1CQR1Pc

Dial-A-Song c. 1988
live version from Live!! New York City 10/14/94 )with bridge overdubbed for STD 1998)
live from At Large album, 2011

had no idea there was a video for Crane

the bridge makes the song imo

0 #1 votes for "Don't Let's Start" is a little surprising though in a poll with so few entries anomalies like that are expected. It was my #4.

Ana Ng is the correct answer, I think. It's not my personal favorite (tho it's close), but it's songwriting of the highest level and the bolero-like rhythm makes it unlike anything else they've done.

#2 and #1 are my #2 and #1 and two of the songs that mean the most to me in my life, not sure what more I can say.

The highest placing post-"Flood" song being at #17 is harsh but fair.