Weekly Recommendation: They Might Be Giants (the band)
Hello there! My queue ran out and I didn't realize....... it has been a month..... I sorry............
Anyway! This one is near and dear to me. Also gonna be full of links so warning ya now. They Might Be Giants was my first albumn, my first band, the first way I bonded with my dad as an adult and a person, and not as a parent. I had a CD player and borrowed CDs, a few burned with sharpie to label them, a few with the original inserts and all. This is the official playlist of some of my favorites, though it's not all of the songs I love (none of the kids songs on here, and Here Come Science slaps. There's an entire animated version of the album I watched over and over on dvd.)
I feel like I'm less qualified to talk about music than other media, because I don't play any instruments. After switching from the piano teacher I liked to an old witch (I assume she had magic. Mostly I remember her for the painful singing. Please let me do that you are not good at it miss.) I quit. Though I can mimic tunes well, I lost the ability to read music quickly. But I can tell you about this band and my history with it. So this is maybe the only music recommendation you're gonna get. But it will be very long, and I guarantee you will like 1 song of theirs.
This is because of the sheer amount of genres TMBG manages to cover. This bop about the sun is immediately followed by the correction in a ballad correcting it's wrongs. Though they tend to follow alt rock and ska sentiments (like this song my dad sang every time he made bacon) They have love songs, rap, and total nonsense. More than anything they like to experiment with sound. Lyrics are nice, but words are also just noise, and if it sounds good it doesn't need to make sense. Fingertips is one long song or 21 very short songs, things that could have been part of something bigger, but never made it to that stage. That said, they have some songs with actual deep themes. (And also one about underwater cows)
I feel like my playlists shows the albums I grew up with: Flood, Apollo 18, and Mink Car. Those were the songs I played over and over on my cd player, that I choreographed stupid dances too (Oh god cringe) that I thought about making LPS music videos of (oh god even more cringe) Before I turned 21, TMBG played in my city, but it was at a bar, and I couldn't go. My dad called halfway through the concert, and put on speakerphone so I could hear a distorted version of half a song. This year, I got to go to the concert for real, though only after it got cancelled three years in a row. (Covid, covid again, then a car crash yikes. Everyone lived luckily) Luckily, they played Flood, the actual first album out of the ones I had. It was really cool. Give their music a listen, find some funky tunes with lots of horns (The live horns were very good) and tell me your favorite nonsense. This is a bit unhinged but I can't really describe why I like music. It makes me bob my head, and sometimes think deeply, and sometimes fall asleep. It means childhood, it means car rides with my dad, it means standing for way too long but enjoying it anyway.
See you next week if I don't forget again. <3
