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.
The Sun
They Might Be Giants Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho it's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live
But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt, there'd be no you and me
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron, copper, aluminum and many others
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside
And yet the sun is still only a middle-sized star
The sun is far away
About 93,000,000 miles away, and that's why it looks so small
And even when it's out of sight, the sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat, the sun gives light, the sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions
Of hydrogen,carbon, nitrogen and helium
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho it's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live
But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt, there'd be no you and me
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron, copper, aluminum and many others
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside
And yet the sun is still only a middle-sized star
The sun is far away
About 93,000,000 miles away, and that's why it looks so small
And even when it's out of sight, the sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat, the sun gives light, the sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun's atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions
Of hydrogen,carbon, nitrogen and helium
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
"They Might Be Giants" created the song Why Does the Sun Shine? as an educational song for children. The song provides fascinating information about the sun, including its composition, size, heat, energy, and distance from Earth. The lyrics describe the sun as a massive ball of incandescent gas, which is essentially true. The sun is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, which are lighter than other elements; this composition is important for the sun's ability to produce energy through nuclear fusion. In contrast, the Earth and other planets are composed mainly of heavier elements such as iron, silicon, and oxygen.
The song acknowledges that the sun is so hot that it would be impossible for humans to survive on its surface, but without the light and heat it provides, there would be no life on Earth. The sun's light enables photosynthesis in plants, which in turn produces oxygen, the gas essential for human and animal life. The song explains the sun's distance from Earth, which is approximately 93 million miles (or 150 million kilometers), and how its atomic energy creates the sunlight that we see.
Line by Line Meaning
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
The sun is a big hot ball of gas that uses nuclear reactions to create energy
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun uses nuclear fusion to turn hydrogen into helium and this happens at an extremely high temperature
Yo ho it's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live
The sun is very hot and not a place where humans could survive
But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives
Life on Earth needs the sun's light to exist
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy
Humans need the sun's light, heat, and energy to live
Without the sun, without a doubt, there'd be no you and me
Without the sun, humans would not exist
The sun is hot
The sun has a high temperature
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
The high temperature on the sun makes everything on its surface a gas
Iron, copper, aluminum and many others
Even substances like iron, copper, and aluminum are gas on the sun
The sun is large
The sun is a big celestial object
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside
The sun is massive and could fit a million Earths if it were hollow
And yet the sun is still only a middle-sized star
Although the sun is very large, it is still just an average star in the universe
The sun is far away
The distance from Earth to the sun is very large
About 93,000,000 miles away, and that's why it looks so small
The sun looks small because it is far away, about 93 million miles
And even when it's out of sight, the sun shines night and day
Even when the sun is not seen, it continues to provide light and shine
The sun gives heat, the sun gives light, the sunlight that we see
The sun produces heat and light that we see as sunlight
The sunlight comes from our own sun's atomic energy
Sunlight is produced from the atomic energy generated by the sun
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
Scientists have discovered that the sun uses nuclear reactions to operate like a massive machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions
The energy produced by nuclear reactions in the sun is what creates light and heat
Of hydrogen,carbon, nitrogen and helium
The nuclear reactions in the sun involve elements like hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium
Lyrics © HELENE BLUE MUSIQUE LTD
Written by: HY ZARET, LOU SINGER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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