Dinner Bell: One of TMBG's Most Delicious Songs

Layered vocals, surreal lyrics, and Pavlovian vibes that leave you hungry for more.

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An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Harmonies

I have a vivid memory of listening to this song on repeat in my bedroom with the liner notes out. I spent hours practicing and memorizing the lyrics. There was just something so captivating about it all.

John Linnell has stacked multiple tracks of his vocals. Each singing a unique part. This is what creates such a big choral sound. It’s lush and resonant and just one person singing. It was like he had created a barber quartet of himself.

Track 9: Dinner is Served

They Might Be Giants loaded so many audible treasures within the ninth track from Apollo 18. The song is a masterful piece of music that gets progressively more complex, more surreal, and somehow more catchy as you get further into the song—it’s called Dinner Bell.

There was a time in my life that I could sing each of those parts, but I’ve learned recently, that I can now really only find and sing the melody and one harmony. This is what happens when you grow older and develop many conflicting special interests.

Stay with me here; I’m going to be bouncing back and forth from interpretive ideas and technical things that I love about this one.

Soup, Salads, and Syncopation

Here are the lyrics being sung in one particular verse. Keep in mind that this was crammed into just two measures.

I don't know whether I'd rather be having a bottle of vinegar, I don't know whether I'd rather be having an egg, I don't know whether I'd rather be having an order of bacon, or whether I'd rather be having a basket of garlic bread, I don't know whether I'd rather be having some pie or, saving my appetite. 'Cause I'm waiting for the dinner bell to do the bell thing— Dinner bell, dinner bell, ring

Another little detail that I’ve always appreciated: how the piano chords at the beginning (which starts on the chorus) are played in sync with the lyrics—both landing on the downbeats. But when the verse hits, the chords shift to the up beat—while the vocals remain on the downbeat.

This switch-up subverts your ear’s expectations and creates a sort of melodic dissonance. I don’t know if that’s a proper term, but the point is that it sounds super interesting. I also play a mean air piano along to this track.

The Classic “Playing Vocals Sung in Reverse—in Reverse”

The bridge in the middle of this song is one of the quintessential They Might Be Giants musical maneuvers. The lyrics of the bridge are simple:

Shoulder, bicep, elbow, arm Forearm, thumb, wrist, knuckle, palm Middle, pinky, index, ring Dinner bell, dinner bell, ding

What makes it stand out is how we hear them. The vocals sound like a record playing in reverse. Which is sort of true.

Creating the sound was no simple task. First, Linnell recorded himself singing the words normally. Then, he listened to that recording played backward so that he could learn how to pronounce and sing it completely, sonically in reverse.

Once perfected, he recorded his actual backward singing, and that track was placed in the bridge in reverse. The end product is the uncanny vocals that we hear in the final song.

It is an interesting, time intensive, and tedious effort for what the band often describes as “medium results.” I love this about them.

Pavlov’s Hunger Games

Dinner Bell clearly takes inspiration from Ivan Pavlov’s famous experiment with dog saliva. Pavlov conditioned dogs to produce saliva involuntarily by ringing a bell. This was done by ringing that bell before feeding the dogs. Eventually, the dogs would salivate after hearing the bell, even if no food was produced. It’s been a long time since I was in high school, but that’s the gist.

As the song progresses, so does its pace. The vocal phrasing accelerates from one stanza to the next. (Pardon my loose grip on music theory here.) The rhythms move from eighth notes to sixteenth notes, and then all the way to sextuplets.

This ramping intensity creates tension and urgency—like we’re racing toward something. Or maybe like we’re getting...

more hungry.

Throw something tasty in the oven and fill your home with the smell of delicious food, and while you wait, listen to Dinner Bell and take in the full experience:

The Final Ding

By the end, Linnell restates the chorus but this time, adds a fresh harmony—probably a dominant seventh—and John Flansburg comes in with a counterpart. The effect is deceptively simple on the surface but there’s an incredibly rich, layered, and intentional musical architecture underneath it all. A flexing of musical prowess.

Needless to say, this song is absolutely a banger. I never skip dinner, and I never skip Dinner Bell.

Sound Off in the Comments

What’s a song that makes you feel instantly hungry? Not just for food—maybe for memories, attention, weird thoughts, or just more of that song.
Drop it in the comments!

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