Exquisite Dead Guy: In Loving Memory
A eulogy for the weirdest, tenderest two minutes on Factory Showroom.
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We gather here today to remember Exquisite Dead Guy, a song who lived a short, surreal life on Factory Showroom, yet managed to make an impression far larger than its two-minute runtime ever promised.
It’s never easy to speak at a funeral, especially for a track that never once complained, never overstayed, and never did anything more disruptive than quietly rotating in its display case. But some songs earn a eulogy simply by existing in that strange intersection between tenderness and absurdity. This is one of them.
Exquisite Dead Guy moved through the album with a kind of hushed confidence. While the rest of Factory Showroom experimented, he showed up with nothing more than a cello, a bass line that slinks rather than struts, and a whole lot of a cappella syllables.
For most of the track, he said very little. He didn’t need to. He was content to float past our high-rise windows, hang politely from his skyhook, and let the ba-ba-das speak on his behalf.
But then, right at the one-minute mark, he finally opened his mouth.
“How’m I s’posed to let you know
the way I feel
about you?”
Soft at first, like a confession that slipped out by accident. Then again. Louder, fuller, more layered as if the feeling refused to stay buried.
It’s the part of the song that reached directly into my chest every time. The tiny moment when the silliness stops being silly and becomes something raw. That aching sense of wanting to say something real to someone, but knowing you can’t, or shouldn’t, or don’t know how without making everything complicated and weird.
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And then, just as quickly, the emotion closes itself back up. The song clears its throat. And we’re right back to ba ba da ba ba ba da ba. Like any of us at a wake, suddenly changing the subject because the emotional part got a little too loud.
This was his gift to us:
To hold contradiction without apology.
To be both profound and ridiculous in the same breath.
To remind us that longing often hides in plain sight.
We remember Exquisite Dead Guy not just as Track 4 on Factory Showroom, but as a quiet thematic cousin to S-E-X-X-Y, carrying on the album’s string-and-groove lineage with humility. A shy relative who didn’t ask for attention but earned it anyway.
He didn’t make it onto most of my playlists. I didn’t visit him often. But I never skipped him. Some relationships are like that; steady, unnoticed until you return and think, God, I forgot how good you were. I should’ve come by more.
As we say goodbye, let us honor this exquisite little dead guy the way he lived.
With a bit of oddness, a bit of tenderness, and a melody that refuses to explain itself.
May his memory rotate gently in its display case forever.
May his skyhook never rust.
And may we listen for the quiet moments. The ones where the music tells us something true before pretending it didn’t.
Ba ba da ba ba ba da ba.
Amen.
You’re reading one of my Factory Showroom essays, an album full of oddball beauty, quiet heartbreak, and some of the band’s most elegant songwriting. Writing through this era has felt like excavating older memories with sharper tools.
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This song will always hold a special place in my heart. At my first TMBG show in Buffalo in April '98, they played this to start the first encore, and had these weird, disembodied heads on long poles that "sang along" with the band.
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/they-might-be-giants/1998/tralfamadore-cafe-buffalo-ny-63d6e2b3.html
That set, and especially that encore, solidified my lifelong fandom. Love this song, and love that it's getting this level of coverage and appreciation so many years later!