Hypnotist of Ladies: You Won’t Remember Why You Liked Him

When I snap my fingers, you’ll crave a post about They Might Be Giants, teenage heartbreak, and hypnotic riffs. -Snap- You're already reading.

The cover of one of the greatest albums in the world.

This is a straight-up John Flansburgh number about a guy who is terrible to be in a relationship with. Even though it may seem obvious to everyone else, people keep falling for him—like they’re entranced. Under his charming, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing powers.

As the lyrics say:

He’s a hypnotist.
Hypnotist of ladies.

We’ve reached the antepenultimate Apollo 18 track. Someone might jump in the comments to correct that statement and say there are technically still twenty-two songs left.

Yes and no.

You’ll have to wait until next week for that. Cliffhanger!

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Hypnotist of Ladies may only last 102 seconds, but every one of them rocks. Maybe I’m biased because I happen to own this particular kind of pedal, but the electric guitar sounds like it's running through a tremolo, oscillating under each verse like a sonic sleight of hand. Or perhaps, a pocket watch swaying from side to side?

The TMBW.net entry for this track has a single sentence under Trivia/Info:

“The song prominently features the Bo Diddley beat throughout.”

This is true! That trademark rock-and-roll rhythm (think I Want Candy, and basically half of ‘50s rock) is the backbone here. That one line on TMBW sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on the history of the Bo Diddley beat as well an only semi-related hour long adventure into how “Shave and a Haircut (Two Bits)” became a cultural artifact.

I first heard this song during a phase in my life when I crushed hard but never spoke up. I was the friend. Always the friend. The one who watched the person I liked run into the arms of a Guy Everyone Should Have Known Better Than. And later, I’d be the shoulder for the breakup or the reveal of the cheating. I was a good friend but teenage me was slow to understand the pattern.

Then one fateful day in junior high, I get this album and this song came on. And in under two minutes, I had a vocabulary for what was happening. A context that it all fit into.

These guys all had one thing in common:

They were hypnotists of ladies.

“Never had a pocket watch / Never counted backwards”

“You won’t remember why you liked him.”

I remember hearing that line and thinking, exactly. That was the mystery. My friends could never explain their attraction, even to themselves.

“Why did I ever like that guy?”

“Maybe because everybody at school talks about liking him, and he was choosing you. And you being appealing to him was appealing to you? I have no idea,” is something I very likely would have said in that moment.

But really, I didn’t know. And Flansy had already told me the answer.

This song helped me avoid the easy solution: becoming that guy. The charismatic debonaire. It was working for those guys. But I was more interested in dissecting them than becoming one.

Why are these guys the way they are?

Why do they keep getting to be the focus of affection over me?

Why did I always find myself so enamored by emotionally unavailable people?

That pattern didn’t stop after high school. I saw it again after my divorce, a dad of four navigating a different kind of vulnerability. But from the moment I heard this song forward, I could spot the archetype, and now I had an anthem ready.

“You’re getting sleepy. Very sleepy.”

Ever fall for someone with big “hypnotist of ladies” energy?
Tell me your best (or worst) confusing crush story in the comments.

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