Boat of Car
A really big car or a regular sized boat?
Another lyric that I’ve been singing incorrectly.
“Can you sing bass?”
Another fine and embarrassing example of a song lyric that I had wrong for decades. “Boat of Car” by They Might Be Giants begins with the lyric, “Daddy’ll sing bass” in a very bassy vocal a ’la Johnny Cash. In fact, I have learned for the first time today that this line is a sample from Johnny Cash’s song “Daddy Sang Bass.”
Look, I’m embarrassed. Do I have to be familiar with all the facts of every TMBG song in order to be considered a true fan? I don’t think that is a fair bar to hold anyone to. I call myself a Johnny Cash fan and I’ve only heard maybe 5 of his songs and Daddy Sang Bass ain’t one of them.
Musically, this song is a banger for me.
Can you think of any songs that have a particular instrument or effect that just scratches an itch in your brain that you never knew was there? Almost every sound in this song does it for me. The synths in the beginning, the low bassy horn, and the short scratchy string instrument.
I believe there is an even much more recent cover of this song by an artist named, “Recepter” that I enjoy a lot. That artist could be one person or an entire band; I have no idea. I can unfortunately report this song that they didn’t originate is all I have heard from them - but nice job!
Lyrically, this song is true horror.
Aside from the Johnny Cash samples, the lyrics in Boat of Car are brief. Brief, but bleak.
I took my boat for a car.
I took that car for a ride.
This man has is demonstrating that he has a hard time distinguishing a boat and a car. Easily mistaking one for the other. In this case, he thinks he has mistaken his boat for a car and decided to take that car for a ride. Maybe into the water? In which case he’d be in the water with a boat. Sounds like a good time and it worked out great. Unless. . .
What if, the man did not mistake his boat for a car? What if he really was just looking at his car? This would mean that he could have driven the car into deep water. What if he wasn’t alone in that?
I was trying to get somewhere
but now I’m following
the traces of your fingernails
that run along the windshield
on the boat of car
A passenger who has come along for a joy ride. Unbeknownst to this unnamed person, their driving buddy thinks their car is a boat and they have now plunged into a body of deep, dark, cold water.
Traces of fingernails running along the windshield paint a horrific image of a person trapped. Gripped with the soul crushing dread of the drowning they are about to experience, this passenger has resorted to clawing their way through a glass windshield. A futile and painful attempt at reaching safety that leaves behind bits of yourself to no reward.
What is this passenger’s friend doing now that the car will no longer drive? He’s just watching the panic overtake this other person. Maybe listening to a cassette track of Johnny Cash before the electronics fail.
“Daddy’ll sing bass.”
The passenger is crying, screaming for help and trying to scratch their way to freedom.
“Daddy’ll sing bass”
But the driver, who was trying to get somewhere, is just following the traces of their fingernails that run along the windshield.
“Daddy’ll sing bass”
Until it all comes to an end.
Tell me what YOU think.
I have never read up on other interpretations of this song. This is what I’m hearing take place when I listen to Boat of Car and it’s as disturbing as it is grim. Learning the “true” meaning may rob me of this haunting interpretation that I have. Tell me what you think is happening in this song. Am I way off?
Are there any songs whose lyrics you realized late in life that you were way off? Please share with us so my humiliation is it alone.
Let’s wrap this up.
Boat of Car is another TMBG classic that I hate to skip and love to sing. The dark and ambiguous lyrics coupled with those unique sounds hit every sensory need in my body when I hear it. Next week, I’ll be writing about Absolutely Bills Mood with all the rubber lined rooms and lighthouses that come along with it.
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Really enjoyed this bit on "Boat of Car". I think your 'creeping horror' interpretation is very interesting. I can totally see how your interpretation fits. The emotional tone and progression of the song strikes me somewhat differently.
One of the things I love about the Giants songs is that between their use of lyrical allegory and musical composition choices, the imagination of the listener gets activated and maybe a little bit pried apart like delaminating a piece of plywood. All kinds of stuff then grows in those delaminations - dreams, imaginings, anxieties, joys, etc.....all the stuff art and human consciousness are made of, very rich content.
Ultimately, I think all of our interpretations of these songs are a reflection of our own internal landscape as much as anything that Johns were trying to say in the first place. What I really enjoyed when comparing my experience of this song to yours was how your growing sense of horror reached a height of tension by the end of the song but was not resolved, whereas my tension was. Perhaps my interpretation is less reality based, and more like looking at a surrealist painting (the surrealists claimed to paint only their own dream content - see Rene Magritte).
I experience the song more like an anxiety / tension dream that gets resolved to a more relaxed and lulled relief at the end, like being rocked on the waves gently in a boat. For me this is because of the key and tempo changes in the song.... and also the fact that I don't take any of the lyrics very literally, but rather as what it's like to be inside the dream world of the writer.
I don't know the actual key the song is written in. What I can talk about are the relative key shifts based on the intervals between different notes.
"Boat of Car" starts out with a clip of the great Johnny Cash singing his famous line from "Daddy Sang Bass". "Daddy" is in a major key, but because Boat of Car is in a different key than Daddy Sang Bass is, the three notes that Johnny Cash sample shift from a major key to a minor key, which creates some tension and apprehension (or as you put it 'existential dread). Very cool.
Let's pretend for convenience that Boat of Car is played in the minor key (I propose C minor), even though "Daddy Sang Bass" is in a major key (I propose Eb major). This transposition of the Johnny Cash lyric into a minor scale gives it a more ominous tone. For me at least, the contrast between my memory of the original Johnny Cash lyric and how it comes across in Boat of Car is part of what is so unsettling about the song. What's even more interesting, is that at the end of the song, the key of "Boat" itself shifts to that same Eb major key that "Daddy Sang Bass" naturally lives in, resolving the tension.
The beat at this point also changes from a chattery, irritating, nervous sort of beat to a fluid rolling beat.
So to recap, the song momentarily starts out in an Eb major key, immediately changes to a C minor key, stays there with all these little beautiful tension touches, and then resolves back into a cheerful Eb major at the very end. Phew! My dream self and my musical ear experiences that as a wave of relief.
Because of this (and probably because I don't take any of the lyrics as anything other than dream imagery), I find it to be a very soothing song. As I'm personally someone who is always a little internally anxious and hyper focused (lots of thoughts, ideas and experiences rattling around up in there), the musical resolution of the song from tension to relaxation is a kind of normal transition for me, like drifting off to sleep after a busy day.
I don't know if the Johns did any of this on purpose, or if it was all instinct and musical ear training, but it makes Boat of Car one of my favorite songs on that first album.
I'm not trying to say the Giants are music theory geniuses or anything, but they do have a real feel for how key and tempo changes affect mood as do many highly competent composers.
One final note, I think the wide variance between our own experiences of this song are an example of what's brilliant about the Giants music, and why people are so captured by it. It is specific enough to suck you into the details, but broad enough to allow your own unconscious and imagination to have a real field day. And perhaps your interpretation of impending death has some real merit, given that "Daddy Sang Bass" is sung by a guy who's at the end of his life, looking forward to going to see his whole dead f*cking family in heaven. Such a cheerful major key song with such morbid aspirations toward death. Kind of Giant-ish, wouldn't you say?
Once again, really enjoyed your blog, and the rabbit hole that opened up in my own brain as a result of it.