Starting off this enormous writing endeavor with They Might Be Giants’ self titled album. Sometimes referred to as The Pink album and by sometimes I mean that I think I’ve heard it once or referred to it as such once. Who can know? As a person who believes that they suffer from perpetual unfortunate luck, I feel that the lyrics in Everything Right Is Wrong Again speak to me profoundly. “Don’t you want to know the reason why the cupboard’s not appealing? Don’t you get the feeling that everything that’s right is wrong again?”
Should I back up and explain who They Might Be Giants are? I’m going to assume you’re here because you know. If I’m wrong, hopefully this blog will send you on a quest for knowledge to discover more about these two dudes named John and the music they make together. This isn’t a biographical wiki of the musicians, it’s a blog where I write about every song from every They Might Be Giants album. Let’s get back to it.
After the bridge (1:39) there is a keyboard that comes in and just absolutely sets the stage for the notes and scales weaving throughout melodic verses that John Linnell will be sending into your ear canals for decades to come. My fingers have spontaneously mimicked the playing of keys to this part while driving. Absolutely embarrassing.
As I’m sure I’ll mention often while writing about songs from this album, I listened to it repeatedly during long camping road trips with my best friend and his parents. Sitting on the back of a big truck was a camper trailer. The kind that rests on top of the truck cab and into the bed of the truck. Whatever you call those. In the back of the camper, was me and my friend playing cards and listening to this album for an entire summer. It wasn’t the first album that I heard although a song that coming in a few more weeks was the second song I ever heard from them. When I hear this song, I’m in the back of that camper again. A kid escaping from his tumultuous relationship with his mom, his chronic anxious thinking, and just having fun with his best friend.
As an adult, I would slowly learn deeper meanings from the words within. Sometimes in life (or very often in life), you go through something traumatic. Even though it seems like you’ve moved past this thing, be it a break up, divorce, a horrible fire that you escaped moments before all of you belongings burned to ashes, you feel the remnants of that trauma.
You're a weasel overcome with dinge.
Weasel overcome but not before the damage done.
The healing doesn't stop the feeling.
I think about that last line a lot. The healing doesn’t stop the feeling. A comforting reminder that having residual feelings over trauma doesn’t mean I’m broken (I am but that’s not why), it just means healings from it doesn’t make you numb to it.
That’s about all I can write on this one. Thanks for coming along on this ridiculous idea for a blog. When it comes to this song:
you know everything that I know. So, I know
you've heard the voice that makes the silent noise
That says that
Everything that's right is wrong again
And now the post is over now.
The post over now.