Counting Down the Best of 2024: TMBG Songs, Stories, and Nostalgia
The results are in! Here are the reader-favorite Kiss Me, Son of Blog posts from 2024. Bathe in the countdown glory and bask in the glow of stories from the past.
I started this journey to write about every They Might Be Giants song just over a year ago. Along the way, many readers have shared what the band means to them and how deeply some of the songs I’ve covered resonate with them.
These conversations have even extended beyond the keyboard, with people reminiscing about being introduced to TMBG by their parents, only to rediscover the band through my posts. I love the idea of rekindling that nostalgia and inspiring others to dive deeper into the incredible TMBG Catalog of Awesomeness.
Writing this newsletter has made me reach far into my past, dredging up memories and emotions that often only surface when a particular song plays in my queue—which, honestly, is not daily. Contrary to *points at everything in this newsletter*, TMBG is not the only music I listen to.
This past year has given me the chance to revisit familiar songs with fresh ears, connecting them to my lived experiences and lifelong love for TMBG. It also inspired some of my most time-consuming, complicated, and exhausting posts—projects so ambitious that I couldn’t help but laugh at how much effort I poured into them, knowing they were mainly for my own satisfaction.
Yet, those posts are some of my favorites—and at least one of them earned a spot on this Top 10 list.
If this is your first time reading Kiss Me, Son of Blog: Welcome! I’m glad to have you here. If you’ve been reading for a while, I just want to say THANK YOU for spending your time with me.
You could literally be doing anything else, but you chose to spend some of your precious time reading my words. That means the world to me.
Now, let’s do this countdown.
Number 10
For reasons you’ll have to discover on your own, I decided to write this post in reverse starting from the bottom. I had a lot of fun with this while also getting very frustrated with it and giving up on the idea twice. Only to come back to it, determined to fully waste my time in the name of “art.”
Number 9
I didn’t expect to feel sad while I wrote about this song but it brought up a lot weirdly unresolved emotions about my childhood dog. I’m happy to have written this and I learned to appreciate the song in an entirely new way.
Number 8
Nothing like a good song to remind you how you often feel left out of groups. This song reminds me that my favorite band may have felt that way too. So, you know. Not alone.
Number 7
This isn’t the first song that I wrote about where I had to come to terms with the amount of cringe behavior I exhibited as a teenager. Nothing problematic but oh, so embarrassing. You know what, I think in this case I handled things pretty well.
Number 6
Early morning wake-up alarms influencing my experience of a song as the meaning of the song itself comes into focus. A stark, grim, class-struggling focus.
Number 5
A song that I love so much, I’ve asked it to be played at my funeral. People have asked me why I would want this played after I die and the best answer I can offer is that I just really love this song. It makes me feel something and I want people to hear it. What better way than at my funeral I guess?
Number 4
This song has grown with me over the decades. What began as a feel-good anthem became something deeper, meeting me in dark places and guiding me out of them (with help from therapy and medication).
Number 3
Like so many others, my journey with They Might Be Giants began alone in my bedroom after school, sitting on a beanbag chair and watching Tiny Toon Adventures
Number 2
No surprise that this song is coming in at the 2 spot. I’m assuming the placement is based on song popularity and not my writing ability. I love this song so much. I fucking love it.
Number 1
Your number one pick (with 50% of the votes) is my deeply personal post about They’ll Need a Crane. I hope the votes reflect everyone’s love for this classic TMBG tune—and maybe, just a little, the raw emotions and heartbreak I shared. Perhaps it’s both. In this post, I open up about what I felt when I was married as a teen parent, how this song suddenly took on a very real meaning as a came to terms with an inevitable divorce, and its importance to me at a time when I needed it the most.
Wrapping Up 2024
And that’s the list! Thank you all for voting, reading, commenting, and supporting this little corner of the internet over the past year. Writing about They Might Be Giants has been a labor of love—and occasionally a labor of complete madness—but it’s also been one of the most fulfilling creative endeavors I’ve undertaken in a long time.
As we move into 2025, I’m excited to continue exploring the TMBG universe and sharing more personal stories, analyses, and general weirdness with you. After finishing our journey into Miscellaneous T, we’ll jump into Apollo 18, John Henry, and Factory Showroom. Plus, a big announcement I hope to make at the end of 2025. Please, feel free to revisit your favorite posts from the list, share them with friends, or tell me about songs you’re looking forward to in the future.
The best is yet to come.
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