Trans CS college student
Will talk about minecraft and celeste at any possible moment.
What's your favorite Joke in a tmbg song
just some lyric or moment that is obviously For Comedy and is legitimately that funny
for the record: this was inspired by me listening to Icky and hitting the "I only borrowed one slack" line, which always gets me
I got handed an Ayn Rand sandwich
Straight from a can, it tasted so bland
These lines are just chef kiss
I don't know if it was really meant to be a joke but most of the lyrics of "kiss me, son of god" get me.
also "MINIMUM WAGE!!!!"
For some reason I often think of Can’t Keep Johnny Down: “ Some dude/ Hitting golf balls on the moon/ Bathroom in his pants/ And he thinks he's better than me“
The idea of a weirdo who would think that is such a deftly and specifically sketched Linnell Character
seconding this, you know everything about the guy from this one verse
"Cause you're the only one who can tell me if it's true / that you love me and I love me"
The words I'm singing now
Mean nothing more than "meow"
To an animal
Wake up and smell the cat food
In your bank account
^ stuck in my brain forever
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
from answer:
you wanted tall / i came in under five four
then you asked for dark / i tend to sunburn a lot
as for handsome well / can’t help you there
So many of their songs have that subtle humor in concept or on a meta level but I do love some of the more obvious absurdisms like
Standing in my yard
Where they tore down the garage
To make room for the torn down garage
"If it wasn't for disappointment/I wouldn't have any appointment" gets me every time
My favorite "oke is how in unpronounceable the audio just starts cutting out after the second chorus which is such a funny moment the first time you hear it and realize it's on purpose.
In "Stalk of Wheat":
Linnell: I was all out of luck
Chorus: LIKE A DUCK
Linnell: Like a duck who died
In addition to the silly phrasing of the lyrics, what always gets me about the song is how it's sort of like a call-and-response folk song except the response comes before the call every time.
there were 87 Advil in the bottle now there's 30 left
I ate 47 so what happened to the other 10
I really like in No One Knows my Plan:
But they're like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy.
Just a great smart-dumb way of describing Plato’s Cave Allegory
just, the way that Spoiler Alert is two unrelated lyrics running at the same time; and yet they're both about. people driving who should not be driving. it's very funny to me
He wants a shoehorn,
the kind with teeth.
People should get beat up
for stating their beliefs!
My fav is probably the prosthetic forehead transition in We Want A Rock. A fully agreeable metaphor and then the sudden pivot to the singer’s very specific interest. Gets me every time and also like yeah dude live your life
Ton of other good ones have already been posted but I also like:
it's just flansburgh talking and not really a song lyric but i think about the wording of the chopping block testimonial so often
"Hey, this is John of They Might Be Giants. You might know me better as one of the guys from They Might Be Giants. You know, chemistry is like a relationship. And that's why when you're looking for web design, go to the best: The Chopping Block. You might not know it, but over 50% of web designers are sleepy and cranky. The Chopping Block, through farm living and an active internship recruiting policy, have over ten million employees ready to serve your corporate whatever-they-call-it. Orange powered and web-fueled, The Chopping Block... e-solutions to e-verybody."
"Ohhhh, I see, back on that old time is money kick again!
Not back on it, Bill. Still on it."
I took this as some kind of neocon gospel when I heard it as a kid (yikes is right 😬) and now I think it's the funniest fucking thing that they could put in a song
Some of my faves've been taken already, but I like the spoken asides in some songs. Big favorite I can currently recall is in "Dedicated" (from Monopuff's "it's fun to steal"; Flansburgh's project, but tmbg-related enough, imo):
"October 17th: Stayed inside. At 11 o'clock I see my dedicated friend through my window. He's across the street, turning the key in his front door. I sit in my chair just beyond the sunlight of the window and speak out: 'There he is.' He looks around, thinking, incorrectly, that he will someday discover my secret identity."
It feels really vivid and the song is otherwise not really lyrically notable, but that aside always humors me.
I mean it's basic of course, but the realization of what the heck Birdhouse in your Soul was about took me almost a year of hearing it off and on, before I actually sat down and worked it out, I laughed for like an hour
But as far as turns of phrase, I think:
A man came up to me and said,
"I'd like to change your mind.
By hitting it with a rock," he said
"Though I am not unkind."
We laughed at his little joke and then
I happily walked away
And hit my head on the wall of the jail
Where the two of us live today
Just "yeah I guess your mind would be changed if you hit it with a rock" lol
"Antlers are what I need you to buy", from Last Wave, is hands-down the funniest joke in a TMBG song. But only in its original context.
Now, Last Wave is among the absolute bleakest songs John Linnell has ever written. They released two versions of it - the "album version" on "I Like Fun", and the "alternative version" on "My Murdered Remains". I first heard the "alternative version", and I had an indescribable emotional response to these weird alien voices relentlessly singing about dying naked and alone. It was so affecting to me. I couldn't get it out of my head.
Then I learned that the "alternative version" was Linnell's original demo, which he wrote while watching the music video to Run DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" on mute. And it syncs up exactly.
This completely changes the vibe of the song. Run DMC's lines are still haunting, even in this weird new context, but every nonsense lyric out of Steven Tyler's mouth is suddenly utterly hysterical.
Watch it and tell me I'm wrong.
god yes I love also the internal rhyming in this (hand/rand/sand/can/bland) that is just pleasurable to listen to on like a poetic level
