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

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.