Man, It's So Loud In Here: The Perfect Dance Song for Introverts
One of They Might Be Giants' best and most perfect songs.
The Nightclub Realization
Last year, I went with a group of friends to a local venue called Airport Tavern.
“It’s been completely remodeled,” they told me.
I hadn’t been since performing stand-up in their small stage area years ago when the performance area was the size of a living room and the PA sounded like a Speak ‘N Spell.
Now it was enormous. Huge stage. Massive sound system. Lights everywhere. The old bar still tucked off to the side, but the rest of the place looked completely different.
It was also my first time in a dance club.
A friend leaned in to tell me something over the music. I caught maybe two syllables and a vague gesture toward the stage. I tried to repeat what I could make out from lip reading.
“WHAT???” she shouted back.
All around me people were dancing and yelling half-sentences at each other that nobody could actually hear.
And suddenly I’m smiling. Everything clicked like that last puzzle piece being pressed into place. The entire room suddenly made sense as a song lyric popped into my head.
They revamped the airport completely
Now it looks just like a nightclub
Everyone's excited and confused
I wasn’t just at a club.
I was inside one of my favorite They Might Be Giants songs.
Man, It’s So Loud In Here is track 3 from the Mink Car album and in my opinion, one of They Might Be Giants’ greatest songs. It’s an electronic tour de force recorded mostly with sounds from the Proteus 2000 sound module. A rack synth that specialized in the glossy electronic textures of the early 2000s.
When Every Place Becomes a Nightclub
Something I love about this song is that the nightclub isn’t really the point. The corner store turns into a nightclub. The airport turns into a nightclub. Every public space slowly becomes the same bright, loud environment designed to keep us moving and consuming. Excited and confused.
It’s also a song that sounds exactly like the environment that it’s criticizing. Listening to this song is being “trapped” in the nightclub while the narrator complains about the nightclub. A classic TMBG trick where the meaning of the song is happening in the music itself. Honestly, it’s infuriatingly clever and makes writing about their songs harder than it should be.
This song gives me frisson on most listens. Something about it builds into this power-driven rock-dance hybrid where every beat, synth stab, and gated guitar chord scratches a different part of my brain. If you love New Order’s Blue Monday, The Pet Shop Boys, or any of the disco synth-pop of the 80’s, you can’t not love this one. Get good headphones, find someplace quiet and put them on. Listen to Man, It’s So Loud In Here.
The Goth Night Solution
Dance clubs always felt like something that passed me by. My twenties were full of working retail, making dinners, and singing my small children bedtime songs.1 I’ve never considered myself much of a dancer either, but a Goth night at a club is full of fellow weirdos, outcasts, former theater kids. All of the kinds of people that I have ever or would ever be friends with.
How you move or dance doesn’t matter in that space. Maybe it doesn’t matter in any of the spaces but there, it feels safe to be expressive and show up however you are. Rather than feeling like I’m too old at 46 to be grooving as a DJ dressed as an Empress Vampire plays mixes of Bauhaus and Joy Division, I feel happy and connected to the music.
At no point have I felt out of place or unwelcome. Thanks largely to my supportive and amazing friends.
ANYWAY, we’re not here to wax poetic about how much I love my friends, we’re here to praise this song that I’ve loved so long and one day last summer, finally fully understood it.
Even though my smart watch will alert me to the unsafe decibel levels, or the fact that we have to carry our coats or purses around if we can’t claim one of 5 tables in the club, it is one of my favorite things to do. Dress up in my most goth attire, meet my friends on the dance floor and, for a few hours, stop overthinking.
Instead of anxiety, relationship troubles, stress from work, or broken hearts…
everyone in the room is thinking the same thing.
Man, it’s SO loud in here.
You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, and high fidelity.
See all Mink Car posts - Start Here
Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)
How fun that you got to experience clubbing for the first time! The right music and group of friends really does make or break it. Back when I used to go, I remember nights where the music grated on my nerves or friends disappeared... not fun, just overwhelmingly loud and uncomfortable. But nights where the group stuck together and the music was perfect... pure joy, just vibing, no worries about whether you were dancing "right," the music carrying you away while you let go of everything on your mind....
It's great that you found a place with a compatible musical vibe and a friends group you're comfortable with! Your ears might ring for the next day, but to me it felt worth it for the endorphin surge.
I love this song, too, and while I'm not into clubbing or electronic dance music, Pet Shop Boys is a guilty pleasure. I would love to hear them cover this tune.
This is one of those songs where They chameleonize into other musicians/composers/producers (looking at you, title track). Kinda like Weird Al when an artist won't let him parody a song so he parodies their style instead, but with TMBG it's extra meaningful rather than just extra fun. Love it when they do that!
Suggestion: after you complete your Mink Car coverage, it would be interesting to read your weekly thoughts on the imminent new album's songs and what it means to you in the now, after new listens as opposed to the decades-long gestation for your current pieces. Though granted, the impact for this week's tune popped more recently for you.
Thank you for your posts and your openness. I'm enjoying listening along to the music with refreshed ears, and working on letting the lyrics sink in better.