They Might Be Giants (TMBG) are an American alternative rock band formed in… Read Full Bio ↴They Might Be Giants (TMBG) are an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 in Brooklyn, New York, United States by John Flansburgh (vocals, guitar) and John Linnell (vocals, keyboards, accordion, bass clarinet). During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early nineties, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are Flansburgh, Linnell, Marty Beller, Dan Miller, and Danny Weinkauf. They are best known for an unconventional and experimental style of alternative music. Over their career, the group has found success on the modern rock and CMJ charts. More recently they have found success in the children's music genre, and in theme music for several television programs and films.
To date, TMBG have released 22 studio albums. Flood has been certified platinum and their children's music album Here Come the ABCs has been certified gold. The band also won a Grammy Award in 2002 for their song "Boss of Me", which served as the theme to Malcolm in the Middle. The band has sold over 4 million records.
Linnell and Flansburgh (often nicknamed "the two Johns" or "John and John") first met as teenagers growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They began writing songs together while attending Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School but didn't officially form a band at that time. The two attended separate colleges after high school (Flansburgh attended Pratt Institute), and Linnell joined The Mundanes, a New Wave group from Rhode Island. The two reunited in 1981 after moving to Brooklyn (to the same apartment building on the same day) to continue their career.
Taking their name from the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants, the duo began performing their own music in and around New York City — Flansburgh on guitar, Linnell on accordion and saxophone, and accompanied by a drum machine and/or a prerecorded backing track on audio cassette. Their atypical instrumentation, along with their songs which featured unusual subject matter and clever wordplay, soon attracted a strong local following. Their performances also featured absurdly comical stage props such as oversized fezzes and large cardboard cutout heads of newspaper editor William Allen White. Many of these props would later turn up in their first music videos.
At one point, Linnell broke his wrist in a biking accident and Flansburgh's apartment was burgled, forcing them to take a break from performing. During this hiatus, they began recording their songs onto an answering machine, and then advertising the phone number in local newspapers such as The Village Voice, using the moniker "Dial-A-Song". They also released a demo cassette, which earned them a review in People magazine. The review caught the attention of Bar/None Records, who offered them a recording contract, which they accepted.
The duo released their self-titled debut album in 1986, which became a college radio hit. The video for "Don't Let's Start", filmed in the New York State Pavilion built for the 1964 New York World's Fair in Queens, became a hit on MTV, earning them a broader following. In 1988, they released their second album, Lincoln, named after the duo's hometown. It featured the song "Ana Ng" which reached #11 on the US Modern Rock chart.
In 1989, They Might Be Giants signed with Elektra Records, and released their third album Flood the following year. Flood earned them a gold album, largely thanks to the success of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" which reached number three on the US Modern Rock chart, as well as "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".
In 1990, Throttle magazine interviewed They Might Be Giants and clarified the meaning of the song "Ana Ng": John Flansburgh said, "Ng is a Vietnamese name. The song is about someone who's thinking about a person on the exact opposite side of the world. John looked at a globe and figured out that if Ana Ng is in Vietnam and the person is on the other side of the world, then it must be written by someone in Peru." (Derek Thomas, Throttle, August 1990.)
Further interest in the band was generated when two cartoon music videos were created by Warner Bros. for Tiny Toon Adventures: "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man". The videos reflected TMBG's high "kid appeal", resulting from their often absurd songs and poppy melodies.
In 1991, Bar/None Records released the B-sides compilation Miscellaneous T. Though consisting of previously released material (except for the "Purple Toupee" b-sides, which were not available publicly), giving new fans a chance to hear earlier non-album work without having to hunt down the individual EPs.
In early 1992, They Might Be Giants released Apollo 18, a space-themed album which coincided with TMBG being named Musical Ambassadors for International Space Year. Singles from the album included "The Statue Got Me High", "I Palindrome I" and "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)". Apollo 18 was also notable for being one of the first albums to take advantage of the CD player's shuffle feature. The song "Fingertips" actually comprised 21 separate tracks — short snippets which could be listened to as one song, but could also be played in random order, interspersed between the album's full-length songs. Due to mastering errors, the UK and Australian versions of Apollo 18 contained "Fingertips" as one track.
Following Apollo 18, Flansburgh and Linnell decided to recruit a supporting band: Kurt Hoffman of the Ordinaires on reeds and keyboards, longtime Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone and drummer Jonathan Feinberg.
John Henry was released in 1994. Influenced by their more conventional lineup, this album marked a departure from their previous releases with more of a guitar-heavy sound. It was released to mixed reviews among fans and critics.
Their next album, Factory Showroom, was released in 1996 to little fanfare. The band had moved away from the feel of John Henry, and Factory Showroom includes the more diverse sounds of their earlier albums, despite the inclusion of two guitarists, the second being Eric Schermerhorn who provided several guitar solos.
They left Elektra after the duo refused to do a publicity show, amongst other exposure-related disputes.
In 1998, they released a mostly-live album Severe Tire Damage from which came the single "Doctor Worm", a studio recording.
For most of their career, TMBG have made innovative use of the Internet. As early as 1992, the band was sending news updates to their fans via Usenet newsgroups. In 1999, They Might Be Giants became the first major label recording artist to release an entire album exclusively in mp3 format. The album, Long Tall Weekend. is sold through eMusic.
Also in 1999, the band contributed the song "Dr. Evil" to the motion picture Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Over their career, the band has performed on numerous movie and television soundtracks, including The Oblongs, the ABC News miniseries Brave New World and Ed and His Dead Mother. They also performed the theme music "Dog on Fire", composed by Bob Mould, for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. More recently, they composed and performed the music for the TLC series Resident Life, the theme song for the Disney Channel program Higglytown Heroes, and songs about the cartoons Dexter's Laboratory and Courage the Cowardly Dog.
During this time the band also worked on a project for McSweeney's, a publishing company and literary journal. The band wrote a McSweeney's theme song and forty-four songs for an album that was meant to be listened to with the journal, with each track corresponding to a particular story or piece of artwork. Labeled They Might Be Giants vs. McSweeney's, the disk appears in issue #6 of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.
TMBG composed the single "Boss of Me" as the theme song to the hit television series Malcolm in the Middle, as well as to the show's compilation CD, bringing a new audience to the band. Another song to feature in the series was "Spiraling Shape". "Boss of Me" became the band's second top-40 hit in the UK which they performed on long running UK television programme Top of the Pops, and in 2002, won the duo a Grammy Award.
On September 11, 2001, they released the album Mink Car on Restless Records. It was their first full album release of new studio material since 1996, and their first since parting ways with Elektra. The making of that album, including a record signing event at a Manhattan Tower Records, was included in a documentary directed by AJ Schnack titled Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). The film was released on DVD in 2003.
In 2002 they released their first album "for the entire family", No! Using the enhanced CD format, it included an interactive animation for most of the songs. They followed it up in 2003 with their first book, an illustrated children's book with an included EP, Bed, Bed, Bed.
In 2004, the band created one of the first artist-owned online music stores, at which customers could purchase and download MP3 copies of their music, both new releases and many previously released albums. By creating their own store, the band could keep money that would otherwise go to record companies. With the redesign of the band's website in 2010, the store was relaunched.
Also in 2004, the band released their first new "adult" rock work since the release of No!, the EP Indestructible Object. This was followed by a new album, The Spine, and an associated EP, The Spine Surfs Alone. It was at this time that Dan Hickey was replaced by Marty Beller who had previously collaborated with TMBG. For the album's first single, "Experimental Film", TMBG teamed up with Homestar Runner creators Matt and Mike Chapman to create an animated music video. The band's collaboration with the Brothers Chaps also included several Puppet Jam segments with puppet Homestar, and the music for a Strong Bad email entitled "Different Town." More recently they recorded a track for the 200th Strong Bad e-mail, where Linnell provided the voice of The Poopsmith.
TMBG also contributed "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", a political campaign song from the presidential election of 1840, to the 2004 Future Soundtrack For America compilation, a project compiled by John Flansburgh with the help of Spike Jonze and Barsuk Records. The compilation was released by Barsuk and featured high-profile acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, and Bright Eyes. All proceeds went to progressive organizations such as Music for America and MoveOn.org.
Flansburgh and Linnell made a guest appearance in "Camp", the January 11, 2004 episode of the animated sitcom Home Movies, each lending their voices to two characters: a pair of camp counselors and two members of a strange hooded male bonding cult. On May 10, 2004, they appeared on episode 140 of Blue's Clues called "Bluestock" alongside several other stars, such as Toni Braxton, Macy Gray, and India Arie.
Following the Spine on the Hiway Tour of 2004, the band announced that they would take an extended hiatus from touring to focus on other projects, such as a musical produced by Flansburgh and written by his wife, Robin "Goldie" Goldwasser, titled People Are Wrong!.
2005 saw the release of Here Come the ABCs, TMBG's follow-up to the successful children's album No!. The Disney Sound label released the CD and DVD separately on February 15, 2005. To promote the album, Flansburgh and Linnell along with drummer Marty Beller embarked on a short tour, performing for free at many Borders Bookstore locations. In November 2005, Venue Songs was released as a two-disc CD/DVD set narrated by John Hodgman. It is a concept album based on all of the "venue songs" from their 2004 tour.
TMBG covered the Devo song "Through Being Cool" in the 2005 Disney movie, Sky High.
Since December 2005, They Might Be Giants have been releasing podcasts on a monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, basis. Each edition includes remixes of previous songs, rarities, covers, and new songs and skits recorded specifically for the podcast.
The band wrote fourteen original songs for the 2006 Dunkin' Donuts ad campaign, "America Runs On Dunkin'", including "Things I Like To Do", "Pleather" and "Fritalian". In the aired advertisement, Flansburgh sings "Fritalian" along with his wife, Robin Goldwasser. A 2008 commercial features the song "Moving".
The band have produced and performed three original songs for Playhouse Disney series: one for Higglytown Heroes and two for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. They also recorded a cover of the Disney song, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" for the movie Meet the Robinsons and wrote and performed the theme song for The Drinky Crow Show. The band was recruited to provide original songs for the Henry Selick-directed movie of Neil Gaiman's children's book Coraline, but were dropped because their music was not "creepy" enough. Only one song, entitled "Other Father Song", was kept for the film with Linnell singing as the titular "Other Father".
Their twelfth album, The Else, was released July 10, 2007, on Idlewild Recordings (and distributed by Zoë Records for the CD version), with an earlier digital release on May 15 at the iTunes Music Store. Advanced copies were made available to stations by mid-June 2007. The album was produced by Pat Dillett (David Byrne) and The Dust Brothers (Beck, Beastie Boys). On February 12, 2009, They Might Be Giants performed the song "The Mesopotamians" from the album on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
In the rest of 2007, They Might Be Giants wrote a commissioned piece for Brooklyn-based robotic music outfit League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots and performed for three dates at the event, and covered the Pixies "Havalina" for American Laundromat Records Dig For Fire - a tribute to PIXIES compilation.
The band's thirteenth album, Here Come the 123s, a DVD/CD follow-up to 2005's critically-acclaimed Here Come the ABCs children's project, was released on February 5, 2008. On April 10, 2008, They Might Be Giants performed the song "Seven" from the album on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2009, the album won the Grammy Award for "Best Musical Album For Children" during the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.
The band's fourteenth album was Here Comes Science, a science-themed children's album. This album introduced listeners to natural, formal, social and applied sciences. It was released on September 1, 2009. On November 3, They Might Be Giants sent out a newsletter stating "The Avatars of They", a set of sock puppets the Johns manipulate for shows, will have an album in 2012, suggesting another kids album. However, a new adult album is also slated to be released in 2010.
The band took their name from the 1971 film They Might Be Giants (starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward), which is in turn taken from a Don Quixote passage about how Quixote mistook windmills for evil giants.
According to Dave Wilson, in his book Rock Formations, the name They Might Be Giants had been used and subsequently discarded by a friend of the band who had a ventriloquism act. The name was then adopted by the band, who had been searching for a suitable name.
To date, TMBG have released 22 studio albums. Flood has been certified platinum and their children's music album Here Come the ABCs has been certified gold. The band also won a Grammy Award in 2002 for their song "Boss of Me", which served as the theme to Malcolm in the Middle. The band has sold over 4 million records.
Linnell and Flansburgh (often nicknamed "the two Johns" or "John and John") first met as teenagers growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They began writing songs together while attending Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School but didn't officially form a band at that time. The two attended separate colleges after high school (Flansburgh attended Pratt Institute), and Linnell joined The Mundanes, a New Wave group from Rhode Island. The two reunited in 1981 after moving to Brooklyn (to the same apartment building on the same day) to continue their career.
Taking their name from the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants, the duo began performing their own music in and around New York City — Flansburgh on guitar, Linnell on accordion and saxophone, and accompanied by a drum machine and/or a prerecorded backing track on audio cassette. Their atypical instrumentation, along with their songs which featured unusual subject matter and clever wordplay, soon attracted a strong local following. Their performances also featured absurdly comical stage props such as oversized fezzes and large cardboard cutout heads of newspaper editor William Allen White. Many of these props would later turn up in their first music videos.
At one point, Linnell broke his wrist in a biking accident and Flansburgh's apartment was burgled, forcing them to take a break from performing. During this hiatus, they began recording their songs onto an answering machine, and then advertising the phone number in local newspapers such as The Village Voice, using the moniker "Dial-A-Song". They also released a demo cassette, which earned them a review in People magazine. The review caught the attention of Bar/None Records, who offered them a recording contract, which they accepted.
The duo released their self-titled debut album in 1986, which became a college radio hit. The video for "Don't Let's Start", filmed in the New York State Pavilion built for the 1964 New York World's Fair in Queens, became a hit on MTV, earning them a broader following. In 1988, they released their second album, Lincoln, named after the duo's hometown. It featured the song "Ana Ng" which reached #11 on the US Modern Rock chart.
In 1989, They Might Be Giants signed with Elektra Records, and released their third album Flood the following year. Flood earned them a gold album, largely thanks to the success of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" which reached number three on the US Modern Rock chart, as well as "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".
In 1990, Throttle magazine interviewed They Might Be Giants and clarified the meaning of the song "Ana Ng": John Flansburgh said, "Ng is a Vietnamese name. The song is about someone who's thinking about a person on the exact opposite side of the world. John looked at a globe and figured out that if Ana Ng is in Vietnam and the person is on the other side of the world, then it must be written by someone in Peru." (Derek Thomas, Throttle, August 1990.)
Further interest in the band was generated when two cartoon music videos were created by Warner Bros. for Tiny Toon Adventures: "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man". The videos reflected TMBG's high "kid appeal", resulting from their often absurd songs and poppy melodies.
In 1991, Bar/None Records released the B-sides compilation Miscellaneous T. Though consisting of previously released material (except for the "Purple Toupee" b-sides, which were not available publicly), giving new fans a chance to hear earlier non-album work without having to hunt down the individual EPs.
In early 1992, They Might Be Giants released Apollo 18, a space-themed album which coincided with TMBG being named Musical Ambassadors for International Space Year. Singles from the album included "The Statue Got Me High", "I Palindrome I" and "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)". Apollo 18 was also notable for being one of the first albums to take advantage of the CD player's shuffle feature. The song "Fingertips" actually comprised 21 separate tracks — short snippets which could be listened to as one song, but could also be played in random order, interspersed between the album's full-length songs. Due to mastering errors, the UK and Australian versions of Apollo 18 contained "Fingertips" as one track.
Following Apollo 18, Flansburgh and Linnell decided to recruit a supporting band: Kurt Hoffman of the Ordinaires on reeds and keyboards, longtime Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone and drummer Jonathan Feinberg.
John Henry was released in 1994. Influenced by their more conventional lineup, this album marked a departure from their previous releases with more of a guitar-heavy sound. It was released to mixed reviews among fans and critics.
Their next album, Factory Showroom, was released in 1996 to little fanfare. The band had moved away from the feel of John Henry, and Factory Showroom includes the more diverse sounds of their earlier albums, despite the inclusion of two guitarists, the second being Eric Schermerhorn who provided several guitar solos.
They left Elektra after the duo refused to do a publicity show, amongst other exposure-related disputes.
In 1998, they released a mostly-live album Severe Tire Damage from which came the single "Doctor Worm", a studio recording.
For most of their career, TMBG have made innovative use of the Internet. As early as 1992, the band was sending news updates to their fans via Usenet newsgroups. In 1999, They Might Be Giants became the first major label recording artist to release an entire album exclusively in mp3 format. The album, Long Tall Weekend. is sold through eMusic.
Also in 1999, the band contributed the song "Dr. Evil" to the motion picture Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Over their career, the band has performed on numerous movie and television soundtracks, including The Oblongs, the ABC News miniseries Brave New World and Ed and His Dead Mother. They also performed the theme music "Dog on Fire", composed by Bob Mould, for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. More recently, they composed and performed the music for the TLC series Resident Life, the theme song for the Disney Channel program Higglytown Heroes, and songs about the cartoons Dexter's Laboratory and Courage the Cowardly Dog.
During this time the band also worked on a project for McSweeney's, a publishing company and literary journal. The band wrote a McSweeney's theme song and forty-four songs for an album that was meant to be listened to with the journal, with each track corresponding to a particular story or piece of artwork. Labeled They Might Be Giants vs. McSweeney's, the disk appears in issue #6 of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.
TMBG composed the single "Boss of Me" as the theme song to the hit television series Malcolm in the Middle, as well as to the show's compilation CD, bringing a new audience to the band. Another song to feature in the series was "Spiraling Shape". "Boss of Me" became the band's second top-40 hit in the UK which they performed on long running UK television programme Top of the Pops, and in 2002, won the duo a Grammy Award.
On September 11, 2001, they released the album Mink Car on Restless Records. It was their first full album release of new studio material since 1996, and their first since parting ways with Elektra. The making of that album, including a record signing event at a Manhattan Tower Records, was included in a documentary directed by AJ Schnack titled Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). The film was released on DVD in 2003.
In 2002 they released their first album "for the entire family", No! Using the enhanced CD format, it included an interactive animation for most of the songs. They followed it up in 2003 with their first book, an illustrated children's book with an included EP, Bed, Bed, Bed.
In 2004, the band created one of the first artist-owned online music stores, at which customers could purchase and download MP3 copies of their music, both new releases and many previously released albums. By creating their own store, the band could keep money that would otherwise go to record companies. With the redesign of the band's website in 2010, the store was relaunched.
Also in 2004, the band released their first new "adult" rock work since the release of No!, the EP Indestructible Object. This was followed by a new album, The Spine, and an associated EP, The Spine Surfs Alone. It was at this time that Dan Hickey was replaced by Marty Beller who had previously collaborated with TMBG. For the album's first single, "Experimental Film", TMBG teamed up with Homestar Runner creators Matt and Mike Chapman to create an animated music video. The band's collaboration with the Brothers Chaps also included several Puppet Jam segments with puppet Homestar, and the music for a Strong Bad email entitled "Different Town." More recently they recorded a track for the 200th Strong Bad e-mail, where Linnell provided the voice of The Poopsmith.
TMBG also contributed "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", a political campaign song from the presidential election of 1840, to the 2004 Future Soundtrack For America compilation, a project compiled by John Flansburgh with the help of Spike Jonze and Barsuk Records. The compilation was released by Barsuk and featured high-profile acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, and Bright Eyes. All proceeds went to progressive organizations such as Music for America and MoveOn.org.
Flansburgh and Linnell made a guest appearance in "Camp", the January 11, 2004 episode of the animated sitcom Home Movies, each lending their voices to two characters: a pair of camp counselors and two members of a strange hooded male bonding cult. On May 10, 2004, they appeared on episode 140 of Blue's Clues called "Bluestock" alongside several other stars, such as Toni Braxton, Macy Gray, and India Arie.
Following the Spine on the Hiway Tour of 2004, the band announced that they would take an extended hiatus from touring to focus on other projects, such as a musical produced by Flansburgh and written by his wife, Robin "Goldie" Goldwasser, titled People Are Wrong!.
2005 saw the release of Here Come the ABCs, TMBG's follow-up to the successful children's album No!. The Disney Sound label released the CD and DVD separately on February 15, 2005. To promote the album, Flansburgh and Linnell along with drummer Marty Beller embarked on a short tour, performing for free at many Borders Bookstore locations. In November 2005, Venue Songs was released as a two-disc CD/DVD set narrated by John Hodgman. It is a concept album based on all of the "venue songs" from their 2004 tour.
TMBG covered the Devo song "Through Being Cool" in the 2005 Disney movie, Sky High.
Since December 2005, They Might Be Giants have been releasing podcasts on a monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, basis. Each edition includes remixes of previous songs, rarities, covers, and new songs and skits recorded specifically for the podcast.
The band wrote fourteen original songs for the 2006 Dunkin' Donuts ad campaign, "America Runs On Dunkin'", including "Things I Like To Do", "Pleather" and "Fritalian". In the aired advertisement, Flansburgh sings "Fritalian" along with his wife, Robin Goldwasser. A 2008 commercial features the song "Moving".
The band have produced and performed three original songs for Playhouse Disney series: one for Higglytown Heroes and two for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. They also recorded a cover of the Disney song, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" for the movie Meet the Robinsons and wrote and performed the theme song for The Drinky Crow Show. The band was recruited to provide original songs for the Henry Selick-directed movie of Neil Gaiman's children's book Coraline, but were dropped because their music was not "creepy" enough. Only one song, entitled "Other Father Song", was kept for the film with Linnell singing as the titular "Other Father".
Their twelfth album, The Else, was released July 10, 2007, on Idlewild Recordings (and distributed by Zoë Records for the CD version), with an earlier digital release on May 15 at the iTunes Music Store. Advanced copies were made available to stations by mid-June 2007. The album was produced by Pat Dillett (David Byrne) and The Dust Brothers (Beck, Beastie Boys). On February 12, 2009, They Might Be Giants performed the song "The Mesopotamians" from the album on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
In the rest of 2007, They Might Be Giants wrote a commissioned piece for Brooklyn-based robotic music outfit League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots and performed for three dates at the event, and covered the Pixies "Havalina" for American Laundromat Records Dig For Fire - a tribute to PIXIES compilation.
The band's thirteenth album, Here Come the 123s, a DVD/CD follow-up to 2005's critically-acclaimed Here Come the ABCs children's project, was released on February 5, 2008. On April 10, 2008, They Might Be Giants performed the song "Seven" from the album on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2009, the album won the Grammy Award for "Best Musical Album For Children" during the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.
The band's fourteenth album was Here Comes Science, a science-themed children's album. This album introduced listeners to natural, formal, social and applied sciences. It was released on September 1, 2009. On November 3, They Might Be Giants sent out a newsletter stating "The Avatars of They", a set of sock puppets the Johns manipulate for shows, will have an album in 2012, suggesting another kids album. However, a new adult album is also slated to be released in 2010.
The band took their name from the 1971 film They Might Be Giants (starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward), which is in turn taken from a Don Quixote passage about how Quixote mistook windmills for evil giants.
According to Dave Wilson, in his book Rock Formations, the name They Might Be Giants had been used and subsequently discarded by a friend of the band who had a ventriloquism act. The name was then adopted by the band, who had been searching for a suitable name.
She Was a Hotel Detective
They Might Be Giants Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Nighttime lady
She says maybe
In the all-night Laundromat
Wait one minute
I have seen her
She's a billionaire
She was a hotel detective
But now she's gotten promoted
I don't think it was the money
She didn't care about expensive things
No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings
She was a hotel detective
But now she's better connected
She didn't have to change anything, just the stencil on her window
She used to be quite a lady
She drove the underworld crazy
But now she goes insane in her way when it suits her occupation
She read that motel directive
It told her she was defective
I guess she found an easier way up the ladder, and she took it
Now that lady is running the world
Is she lonely?
She's the only
Girl in this back alleyway
Will she shoot you?
She won't have to
You're already dead
She was a hotel detective
But now she's gotten promoted
I don't think it was the money
She didn't care about expensive things
No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings
She was a hotel detective
But now she's better connected
She didn't have to change anything, just the stencil on her window
She used to be quite a lady
She drove the underworld crazy
But now she goes insane in her way when it suits her occupation
She read that motel directive
It told her she was defective
I guess she found an easier way up the ladder, and she took it
Now that lady is running the world
She says maybe
In the all-night Laundromat
Wait one minute
I have seen her
She's a billionaire
She was a hotel detective
I don't think it was the money
She didn't care about expensive things
No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings
She was a hotel detective
But now she's better connected
She didn't have to change anything, just the stencil on her window
She used to be quite a lady
She drove the underworld crazy
But now she goes insane in her way when it suits her occupation
She read that motel directive
It told her she was defective
I guess she found an easier way up the ladder, and she took it
Now that lady is running the world
Is she lonely?
She's the only
Girl in this back alleyway
Will she shoot you?
She won't have to
You're already dead
She was a hotel detective
But now she's gotten promoted
I don't think it was the money
She didn't care about expensive things
No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings
She was a hotel detective
But now she's better connected
She didn't have to change anything, just the stencil on her window
She used to be quite a lady
She drove the underworld crazy
But now she goes insane in her way when it suits her occupation
She read that motel directive
It told her she was defective
I guess she found an easier way up the ladder, and she took it
Now that lady is running the world
"They Might Be Giants" is a band that has been known for their unique and quirky lyrical style, and "She Was a Hotel Detective" is no exception. The song is about a woman who used to work as a hotel detective but has now been promoted to a higher position. The first verse describes her as a "nighttime lady" who works in an all-night Laundromat. The singer has seen her before and knows that she is a billionaire. The second verse talks about her promotion, which the singer thinks was not for the money, as the woman didn't care much about expensive things. She was content with her work and didn't want anything else. The chorus repeats the fact that she was a hotel detective but has now been promoted to a higher position, and the singer admires her for taking an easier way up the ladder. The song ends with a question about the woman's loneliness and a warning about her lethal abilities.
At face value, "She Was a Hotel Detective" is a song about a woman who has climbed the corporate ladder and is now running the world. However, the lyrics can be interpreted in several ways. One interpretation is that the woman is a metaphor for power, and the song is a commentary on how people often take shortcuts to achieve it. Others see the song as a warning about the cost of success and how it can lead to loneliness and detachment from one's identity. The song's quirky lyrics make it a subject of debate among fans about its true meaning, and TMBG vocalist John Flansburgh has never explicitly explained it.
Line by Line Meaning
Nighttime lady
A woman who is active during the night.
She says maybe
She is uncertain about something.
In the all-night Laundromat
She is in a place where laundry can be done at all times of the night.
Wait one minute
She requests someone to stop for a minute.
I have seen her
The artist has observed her earlier.
She's a billionaire
She has a lot of money.
She was a hotel detective
She used to work as a surveillance officer in a hotel.
But now she's gotten promoted
She has been given an advance position in the hierarchy.
I don't think it was the money
Her promotion wasn't because of the salary hike.
She didn't care about expensive things
Materialistic things aren't important to her.
No furs or pearls or fancy cars or diamond rings
She isn't interested in luxurious items like fur, precious stones, and expensive vehicles.
She was a hotel detective
She used to work as a surveillance officer in a hotel.
But now she's better connected
Her new position provides her with better social connections.
She didn't have to change anything, just the stencil on her window
She did not need to alter anything other than the title in her business nameplate.
She used to be quite a lady
She was previously an elegant woman.
She drove the underworld crazy
She was once notorious among the criminal society.
But now she goes insane in her way when it suits her occupation
She follows her own bizarre methods while doing her job.
She read that motel directive
She went through the instructions given by her employer in a motel.
It told her she was defective
The instructions informed her about some flaw in her work procedure.
I guess she found an easier way up the ladder, and she took it
She found the shorter path towards success and adopted it.
Now that lady is running the world
She has now established her supremacy over the world.
Is she lonely?
Does she feel alone?
She's the only
She is the solitary one present.
Girl in this back alleyway
She is the only woman in that narrow street.
Will she shoot you?
Is she capable of killing someone?
She won't have to
She does not need to shoot because you have already died.
Contributed by Blake J. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
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Broken Toaster
This is my favorite song of all time. It will have to be played at my funeral. I have shown all my friends and family this music video. This song is perfect in every way. I have it memorized and I play it on repeat every day. Words cannot describe my love of this song.
If (she was a) hotel detective had 1000000 fans I am one of them
If (she was a) hotel detective had 10 fans I am one of them
If (she was a) hotel detective had 1 fan it is me
If (she was a) hotel detective had 0 fans then I'm dead
If the world was against (she was a) hotel detective then I am against the world.
SurferDudeGarfield
I love all the shots where John L is in the back, it looks like he’s either really confused of just kind of insane. This is great
Michael Emerson
I like how they still managed to squeeze William Allen White in as a billboard right at the start.
ch7879
Just got my first Baritone Saxophone. Guess what the first song I played on it was? THIS!
ch7879
G-G-F♮-G-B♭-C-C-B♭-G-B♭-G-B♭-F♮
Frank Riding
I feel like it's my birthday with all these bangers being reuploaded
NUMBERQ1
@0okamino It's not MY birthday so why do you lunge out at me?
0okamino
@tmbgfan1 - It's not today?
tmbgfan1
me too, but It's Not My Birthday
Root Beer
I want little dolls of them in that animated style