YMMV / They Might Be Giants

• Alternative Character Interpretation: "The Greatest". Is the titular "Greatest" actually a Butt-Monkey who's being constantly mocked, or is he a genuinely liked performer suffering from severe social anxiety and trying to read the worst out of the praise he receives?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Both the triops and tripod fish in "Triops Has Three Eyes" are real creatures.
• Americans Hate Tingle: While the reception for the kids' albums "Here Come the ABCs" and "Here Come the 123s" is somewhat mixed, but mostly positive in Western territories, the albums both sold horribly in Japan when they were released on DVD in 2010. This is due to the fact that TMBG is rather niche in Japan, as well as the teaching methods and English lyrics being considered too complicated for Japanese children.
• Archive Panic: The Other Wiki guesses that they may be the most prolific artists ever in terms of released material, in no small part due to Dial-A-Song, plus their fondness for Miniscule Rocking. It's almost impossible to own everything they've ever released. Even people who pick up and enjoy every studio album are sometimes surprised by songs they don't know that were never released in an album.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Of a sort in "Particle Man" from Flood with Universe Man, whose description is a total Mind Screw and, unlike Particle Man and Person Man, never fights Triangle Man.
• Covered Up:
  • "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" from Flood was originally a The Four Lads song, but most people these days only know the TMBG version.
  • "Dog on Fire", the instrumental theme song for The Daily Show, was originally written and performed by Bob Mould. However, once Jon Stewart became the host a few years into the show's existence, Mould's version was replaced by one performed by They Might Be Giants. Following Stewart's departure, "Dog on Fire" was replaced with a remixed version arranged by Timbaland and King Logan.
  • "New York City" is a cover of a song by the all-female twee band Cub, whom the Johns were friends with. The original appears on Cub's 1994 album Come Out, Come Out, which had only been released two years prior to TMBG's cover of the song, which helped the fact that more people remembered the cover rather than the original. Flansburgh mentions in the DVD Commentary for Gigantic that he wishes more people knew this, but their version is so popular it's usually near the end of the show and he doesn't feel "Thanks for coming, by the way this next song is not by us..." sounds right.
  • "Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)" is a cover of a 1959 song by Tom Glazer. The song was woefully obscure when TMBG covered it and actually features a handful of now-inaccurate facts (notably that the sun is actually made of plasma, not gas). TMBG recorded "Why Does The Sun Really Shine?" a factually accurate new version of the song for their 2009 childrens' album Here Comes Science.
  • "What Is a Shooting Star?", written by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret (who also wrote the aforementioned "Why Does the Sun Shine").
  • "Walking My Cat Named Dog" from "Why?" is a cover of the 1966 song by Norma Tanega.
• Critical Dissonance: Flood got some surprisingly harsh reviews when it was released, even from reviewers who praised their first two albums (Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau), either accusing them of getting too slick for their major label debut, or fretting that they didn't seem to be getting more "serious". It's their biggest-selling and most beloved album.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Pretty much all of the backing band members:
  • Danny Weinkauf. Starting around No!, he began to write songs for the band, on which he would sing lead. These include some of the group's most memorable children's songs, past and present. He's since parlayed this into a solo career, complete with a backing band of his own.
  • Dan Miller, who really gets the chance to shine in the group's live shows. On top of playing guitar, he'll occasionally sing lead, and he plays Linnell's keyboard parts in songs where Linnell plays two instruments. That, and he usually gets at least one opportunity to bust out an awesome guitar solo.
  • Marty Beller has more than a few fans, and the Johns even wrote a song about him—Marty Beller Mask.
  • While not an official member of the band per se, Robin Goldwasser, John Flansburgh’s wife and frequent TMBG collaborator, is widely beloved by the fandom, both due to their adorable relationship and Robin’s lovely singing voice (and numerous other talents).
• Epic Riff:
  • "The Lady and the Tiger", in full effect.
  • "Ana Ng". The Johns even rhythmically tap their teeth to it in the video.
  • "The Guitar" has a pretty nifty bass riff.
  • "See the Constellation"
• Epileptic Trees: The band seemingly invites these with their abstract approach to songwriting, as shown in the Gigantic documentary with a debate club analyzing the lyrics of "Particle Man". The band neither confirm nor deny any interpretations of their work.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Fans tend to capitalize "They" when the pronoun is used in reference to the band.
  • "Flans" or "Flansy" for John Flansburgh, which the band seem to have embraced: Flansburgh has referred to himself as such in interviews (and his Instagram handle is even "flansyflans"), and Mike Doughty's Word Salad Lyrics to "Mr. Xcitement" include a reference to "Flansy in a soda can".
  • Their self-titled debut album They Might Be Giants (Album) is known as "The Pink Album" or "The Big Blue Dog Album", because of the cover art by Rodney Greenblat that features a pink sky background, with a big blue dog walking in some kind of parade.
• Genius Bonus: In-song references can be both diverse and obscure, including history, literature, and pop culture.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While they have a decent following in their homeland of America, they were (at least early on) much more warmly received at shows during tours overseas in the United Kingdom and Japan.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Car crashes are a recurring lyric motif in their catalog (The "wreck my car" section of "Fingertips", "Subliminal", "The End of the Tour", "Mink Car", "Spoiler Alert", "Push Back the Hands"), as is alcohol abuse, which made some songs harder to listen to after John Flansburgh was seriously injured by a DUI driver, to the point of hospitalization, in 2022. "Mink Car" was affected in particular, since Flansburgh sings lead and the chorus starts off with "I got hit by a mink car".
  • With that being said, it could also be argued that "Good To Be Alive" (also sung by Flansburgh) is now Heartwarming in Hindsight, particularly given his full recovery from his injuries and return to performing.
• Heartwarming Moments: “Ampersand,” which is, in a rarity for TMBG, a legitimately very sweet love song.
  • Also of note is “Definition of Good,” an adorable celebration of the nice things in life from the silly to the sweet.
  • The ending of the animated "Dr. Worm" music video, which has the titular character successfully joining the band.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Cartoonist Mark Marek designed the cover art of the single for "(She Was A) Hotel Detective" in 1988 and did the animation for the "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" music video in 1990. Nine years later, the videos for "Doctor Worm" and "Why Does The Sun Shine" aired as part of the final season of KaBlam!, which Marek worked on (he made the Henry and June wraparound segments). He later did the animation for "Underwater Woman" in 2015.
  • The cover photo for John Henry◊ is a wonderfully dark parody of the cover photo for ...Baby One More Time◊ by Britney Spears, except John Henry came out 4 years earlier.
  • "Celebration, from Join Us, rhymed, among other things, "Anonymous" and "Hieronymous Bosch." The rhyme doesn't stick out as much here as it did when one of their favorite bands used it in the title track of Hippopotamus, six years later.
• Iron Woobie: Mr. Horrible from "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" gets continuously abused and/or humiliated by the narrator and his Ugliness Men. Horrible's only complaint is the comically disproportionate song title.
• Jerkass Woobie: Johnny from "Can't Keep Johnny Down" is a jerkass with a big me-complex, but the root of this behavior is that he feels as if the entire world is against him, and he's made to suffer for it.
• Memetic Mutation: ARE They Giants?
  • The Blue Canary nightlight from "Birdhouse In Your Soul" became this on Amazon as basically every question about the product is a reference to the song, as is every answer. The makers also seem to be in on the joke, as the product picture shows the nightlight plugged in right next to a light switch.
• Misattributed Song: They're not the most common band misattributed, but just as some people on file-sharing services credit every single Reggae song to Bob Marley, lots of them also just assume any quirky Alternative Rock song from The '80s or The '90s is by TMBG, to the point that This Might Be a Wiki has a page on the topic.
  • "88 Lines About 44 Women," by The Nails, a 1984 song that fits the same rough outline as early TMBG—unorthodox Alternative Rock built around simple synth and drum machine sounds with satirical lyrics—but otherwise sounds nothing like them, seems to be the most common one. Flansburgh has even commented on it.
  • "I Am Retarded" by Hemorrhoy Rogers is commonly mistaken to be one of their songs.
  • A few Barenaked Ladies songs have been credited to them.
  • Despite being one of R.E.M.'s most famous songs, even inspiring a Trope, "It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" has occasionally been attributed to them.
  • They've even collided with one of the other common file-sharing misconceptions, that all humorous rock songs are by "Weird Al" Yankovic, with some of their material wrongly assigned to him, like the Brownsville Remix of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" (it was a B-side for the single for the original). Meanwhile, Yankovic's "Everything You Know is Wrong", an admitted TMBG style parody, has been attributed to TMBG.
• Paranoia Fuel: "Hide Away Folk Family", "Where Your Eyes Don't Go", "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair", "It's Not My Birthday", "Hall Of Heads", "A Self Called Nowhere", "The Bells Are Ringing", "Rat Patrol", "Older", "Ant", "Bastard Wants To Hit Me", "I'm Impressed", "Can't Keep Johnny Down", "Black Ops," "Aaa", "What Did I Do To You?", "This Microphone," "Unctuous Robot," "If Day for Winnipeg"... That's a song off of each (non-children's) studio album (and at least one compilation). Yeah, it's one of the band's favorite tropes, and at least half of those have serious Lyrical Dissonance. "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" is downright upbeat.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • They've always been popular with children, even before they wrote or performed with them specifically in mind. Throughout the '90s, their music routinely appeared on children's cartoons, and they even made live appearances on children's television. "Why Does The Sun Shine?", a fan favorite dating back to the 1980s, made its album debut on Here Comes Science.
  • Conversely, their children's music is just as popular with adults. Songs from No! made their way onto greatest hits compilations years later, and "The Bloodmobile," from Here Comes Science debuted as a bonus track on a non-children's compilation. Songs from their children's albums, even the educational ones, routinely make their way onto live setlists. The promotional campaign for Why? even lampshaded this, with the slogan "It's for you, too."
  • The sessions for Glean and Why? ran concurrently, and occasionally, John and/or John weren't sure which songs were meant for what album.
• Sampled Up: The saxophone hook in "Number Three" is a loop taken from Lou Monte's "Skinny Lena." The band found it on a record they discovered while cleaning out an abandoned apartment.
• Sequel Displacement: By far, even to this day, the most well-known album the band has put out is its third, Flood. This is the album that has "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", "Particle Man", and "Birdhouse In Your Soul". Since it's the most common gateway into fandom of the band, there's even a Fan Community Nickname for those that bought Flood as their first TMBG album: Floodies.
• Signature Song: Hardly ever does the band play a concert without "Birdhouse In Your Soul" or "Doctor Worm" on the setlist, with one or both near the end. "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man" are also quite well-known.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In their early days, the Johns worked by themselves and used double-tracking and drum machines to complete the tracks, and they'd play to recordings live. When they finally decided they needed a backup band, fans were pissed. They got over it eventually, though, and now it's hard for most of them to imagine what it would have been like if that had never happened. Their first band album, John Henry, has a controversial status among fans.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Surprisingly "I Can Hear You" off of Factory Showroom, and more than just the fact that it was recorded on a wax cylinder. It references the Viper Car Alarm, the newness of being able to call from an airplane, and the then-brand new super-sizing.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: "One Everything" is about the convergence of number theory and cosmology. Not peripherally, but as the entire premise. As a whole, the song could easily blow the mind of a grad student. It's on the album Here Come the 123s, which was released by Disney Records, aimed specifically at children, and has songs that are obviously for the under-ten set (e.g., an explanation of even versus odd numbers). On the other hand, these deceptively-advanced topics are presented in a way that's nothing but kid-friendly, so maybe it subverts the trope—and the kids!
  What if you drew a giant circle?
  What if it went around All There Is?
  Then would there still be such a thing as an outside?
  And does that question even make any sense?
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Even with some rather esoteric lyrics, it's pretty obvious that many of their songs touch on more mature themes. Yet their songs have appeared in multiple kid-friendly places (such as Tiny Toon Adventures and the first Power Rangers movie) even before they specifically made children's albums. They try as hard as they can to avoid falling under this trope completely by splitting their tours in two to join to their two distinct fanbases (their original alternative rock fans and their new children's music fanbase). The "adult shows" (the one where they play their non-children's material and back catalog) have a 18 (or 21 in some places) cover for when someone tries to bring their kid into an adult TMBG concert expecting to hear music from their children's albums. In addition to the difference in content, this is because "adult shows" tend to take place in venues that serve alcohol, so bringing someone under 18 would generally be illegal.
  • Spotify tried to ameliorate things a bit by adding "They Might Be Giants (For Kids)" as an artist, so one could shuffle the songs meant for children without anything more mature coming up. They were a little inconsistent about it though, and three of their five children's albums are only listed under the normal They Might Be Giants tag.
  • Back when iTunes used to make song mixes under specific genres and moods, they did something similar, which mixed songs from their children's albums and kid-friendly songs from their "adult" albums (like "Particle Man" and "Mammal").

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