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

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.