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They Might Be Giants (band): Difference between revisions
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The band is named for the [[They Might Be Giants (film)|1971 film]] starring George C. Scott as a man who thinks he's [[Sherlock Holmes]], and Joanne Woodward as his psychiatrist, a doctor whose name happens to be Watson. The name of ''that'' film is a reference to ''[[Don Quixote]]'' (that's why he attacked the windmills, you know)... which was itself a sideways reference to [[The Bible]].
The official unofficial band of tropers everywhere.
They often perform songs attributed to animated projects, or other forms of television entertainment. They sing the theme songs to ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' and ''[[Higglytown Heroes]]''. Some older readers may remember the videos made for two songs from their 1990 album ''Flood'', "Particle Man" and their cover of The Four Lads' song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", on ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]''. Others might remember their late '90s [[Shout-Out]] to the cartoon ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]''. More recently they worked with the creators of ''[[Homestar Runner]]'', resulting in an official music video for "Experimental Film" starring the H*R cast, as well as some jam sessions with the Homestar puppet. As well, "Birdhouse In Your Soul" appears in an episode of ''[[Pushing Daisies]]''. Their cover of "Dog on Fire" (originally performed by their friend, Husker Du guitarist Bob Mould) has been the theme song of ''[[The Daily Show]]'' ever since [[Jon Stewart]] took over.
And finally, the ''[[Coraline (animation)|Coraline]]'' movie was initially meant to be a musical featuring TMBG songs specially written for it; the only ones released so far, "Careful What You Pack" and "The Other Father's Song" (which made it into the movie), could be seen as an indicator of [[What Could Have Been]]. Although The Other Father is voiced by John Linnell while singing his above-mentioned song, he is otherwise voiced by TMBG frequent collaborator [[Complete World Knowledge|John Hodgman]], discussed below.
The band's 1987 music video for their single "Don't Let's Start" was the first ever video by a band on an independent label (Bar/None Records) to go into regular rotation of MTV outside of its alternative block ''120 Minutes'' (which was only created the previous year).
Parodied by the ''[[Discworld]]'' dwarfish band "We're Certainly Dwarfs". They are also partially responsible for Foul Ole Ron's [[Catch Phrase]] "Millennium hand and shrimp" in the same setting, by way of Terry Pratchett dumping a Chinese restaurant menu and the lyrics sheet for ''Particle Man'' into a [https://web.archive.org/web/20100930064632/http://www.eskimo.com/~rstarr/poormfa/travesty.html travesty generator.] Unsurprisingly, Pratchett is confirmed as a fan.
In 2004, they started the Venue Songs project, whereby the would go on tour and write a new song for every venue they played. Venue Songs was released as a CD/DVD combo, the DVD consisting of videos to the songs, with host segments featuring John Hodgman (author of the ''[[Complete World Knowledge]]'' series) as The Deranged Millionaire, a mysterious figure who had set the band with this challenge. If they failed, they would be forced to give up their magical songwriting talisman forever, leaving Brooklyn vulnerable to attack from The Deranged Millionaire's roving baseball gangs and monstrous creatures. Luckily, they won, and the Millionaire was therefore indebted to do an interview in one of their podcasts. It's one of the funniest things ever recorded.
===Studio albums===
* ''They Might Be Giants'' (1986)
* ''Lincoln'' (1988)
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* ''Join Us'' (2011)
* ''No!'' (2002)
* ''Here Come the ABCs'' (2005)
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{{tropenamer}}
* [[Istanbul (Not Constantinople)]] -- assuredly the version that the tropers had in mind when it was named.
* [[Hell Hotel]]
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{{creatortropes}}
* [[Actually Pretty Funny]]: The videos for [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsAiCs66l40 Particle Man] and "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQrKZcYtqg Istanbul]" on ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'' were never "official" videos, but the band loved them so much they were included on the band's 1999 video compilation, ''Direct from Brooklyn''.
* [[All Love Is Unrequited]]
* [[And There Was Much Rejoicing]]: "When Will You Die?"
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* [[Defictionalization]]: [http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/e791/ Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch]. They also sold blue nightlights as promotional material for ''Flood'', but they didn't really look like canaries.
* [[Educational Song]]
* [[Excited Show Title!]]: ''No!'', and its title track.
* [[For Science!]]
* [[Fun with Palindromes]]: "I Palindrome I" is full of variously palindromic stuff; see the trope page for a full listing.
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* [[James K. Polk]]: A whole song [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|about him]].
* [[Jerkass]]: Johnny in "Can't Keep Johnny Down" on the four advance tracks from ''Join Us''.
* [[
* [[Karma Houdini]]: "Reprehensible"
* [[Last-Note Nightmare]]: "Hide Away, Folk Family", dear God.
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* [[Shout-Out]]: Several, from ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' to Plato's Allegory of the Cave to Surrealist party games.
** The B-side "We're the Replacements" might be an allusion to [[The Replacements]], a fellow [[College Radio|college rock]] band.
* [[Silly Love Songs]]: Very, very rare for them, but they do indeed have one straightforward love song: [[Playing Against Type|"Another First Kiss."]]
* [[Small Reference Pools]]: This one works both ways. While not the most common band misattributed, quite a few songs on file-sharing services are mistakenly labeled as being by They Might Be Giants ("88 Lines About 44 Women," by The Nails, seems to be the most common). On the flip side, some of their tracks are labeled as belonging to other bands, particularly remixes (you'll find some people distributing the Brownsville Remix of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" as a [[Weird Al]] song, although it was a B-side for the single for the original).
* [[Spin-Off]]: John Linnell's "State Songs" and "House of Mayors" projects and John Flansburgh's other band, Mono Puff.
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* [[Time Travel]]: The song "2082" is about this. It's also an inversion of [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]] and [[Help Your Self in the Future]], as the character {{spoiler|finds and murders his elderly future self}}.
* [[Two Lines, No Waiting]]: "Spoiler Alert" consists of two overlapping stories: Flansburgh the tired trucker and Linnell the author who texts while driving. They most likely [[Incredibly Lame Pun|meet at the end]].
* [[The Unpronounceable]]: The subject of "Unpronounceable".
* [[Villain Song]]: "Kiss Me Son of God", "I Palindrome I", and others depending on your interpretation.
* [[Vocal Tag Team]]: Linnell and Flansburgh each sing about the same amount in every conceivable way -- about the same numbers of songs singing lead, singing backup, and a smattering of full-fledged duets. In general, the one who wrote a given song will handle lead vocals.
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* [[Widget Series|WAT Band]]
* [[Word Salad Lyrics]]: Commonly. The most blatant example would be "On Earth My Nina", which has an odd genesis. While recording "Thunderbird" for the first time, John Linnell tried backmasking the lyrical part of the song, and thought he heard the lyric "On Earth My Nina". He then proceeded to fill in the rest of the song with random words that kinda-sorta sounded like the other lyrics of "Thunderbird" backwards.
** Other notable examples are "Stuff Is Way" and "Thinking Machine".
* [[Would Hit a Girl]]: The narrator of "Madam, I Challenge You To A Duel", apparently.
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And the old man whose face you see in all their videos is named William Allen White. He was a famous journalist in Kansas from [[The Edwardian Era]] to [[World War II]]. The band were secretive of this for quite some time in case his surviving relatives were to sue them.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:They Might Be Giants]]
[[Category:Notable Quotables]]
[[Category:Musicians]]
[[Category:
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