Mink Car: A Song Worthy To Name An Entire Album After
Discussing the titular song "Mink Car" by They Might Be Giants. One that used to be my least favorite track of the bunch but grew to become one of all-time favorites.
I absolutely could not stand this song when I heard it for the first time.
I’d skip it every single chance I had. Why was the album named for it? Was this supposed to be the greatest song on the album? My musical ears had an immediate Mink Car aversion to its smooth jazz sounds and I was not having any of it.
Woke Up In A Beautiful Dream
Maybe it grew on me but I feel like it’s more fair to say that I grew up and came to understand and appreciate this song for the beautiful piece that it is. Both musically and thematically. Sure, it may have taken me a decade but I got there. Even while just writing this post, I learned more things about the song writing process for this track that made me love it even more.
“Mink Car we actually wrote sitting at a piano in this Leopold and Loeb sort of way. We don't really ever do that.” - John Linnell, Electronic Musician interview, 2008.
John Flansburgh provided even more context in a 2002 interview with MIX magazine.
“Mink Car was done backward. We recorded the piano first, and then did the drums afterward, then all the horns and vocals and everything. The very last thing we did was have Danny Weinkauf, our bass player, play the bass part. The great part about it is that the bass gets to do all the elaborate stuff in all the holes that weren't filled by anything else.”
After reading that last quote, I grabbed my nicest headphones, sat in my quiet room and listened to the song again. The bass levels in the song’s mix are quiet and I had missed what’s really going on before. But, wow. The Johns aren’t kidding around. Weinkauf fills those space with beautiful bass-y flourishes that really compliment this piece so perfectly.
Mink car isn’t full of midi samples and digital keys. It’s a room full of musicians sitting around a live piano with guitars, drums, a flugelhorn and more, creating something wonderful. That’s the image I see when I close my eyes and listen.
The first half of the album is full of clever, quirky, positivity. Songs about being in love, hi-fi music, the embodiment of excitement, dance clubs, and the appreciation of bangs. Then at the mid-point, the mood shifts and we hear about hopelessness, disparity, alcoholism, a body that no longer works, and the unceasing nature of the passing of time.
The punctuation mark at the end of that depressing (in spirit not in music) run is Mink Car. A song that circles the the shallowness of the ultra wealthy and the reminder that we are all susceptible to a life alerting car accident.
According to Flansy, the impetus of the song title itself comes from his wife, Robin Goldwasser. While discussing what they imagined people do when they become wealthy, he suggested they likely go shopping for mink coats. Goldwasser’s suggestion? More like a mink car.
Silver Chauffeurs
This evolves into a song where said wealthy individual is recounting the aftermath of a car accident. Rich people aren’t like us, you see. When they get hit by a car and have their wig knocked off their head as they hit the ground. It is a diamond wig taking to the sky and ground made of platinum waiting to meet them. When the force trauma claims their life, they aren’t just dead; they’re 24-karat dead.
Was the song Drink! the cause of the car accident in this one? And if so, was the alcohol being sung about in Drink! in relation to the person experiencing the Hopeless Bleak Despair? And is the car accident in the song Mink Car what caused the paralysis of the person in My Man? There’s almost a Beatles-level opportunity for album conspiracies here that I wish to be true. It’s at least fair to say that the entire second act of this album is thematically heavy and before the third act, we get this beautiful sounding song.
Ultimately, I think the song Mink Car eloquently and poetically illustrates the reality that the gap between the lower and highest economic classes becomes much closer if measured in fragile human mortality and depth of character. A billionaire can wake up alone and hollow on the inside. Their smile nothing but “an open sign on an abandoned store.” And when their time comes, they too will die.
In this very moment, with repeated listens, having researched and written these words, I am astonished that I could have ever not liked this song. To me, this song is the point. It’s no wonder the entire album is named after it.
You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.
See all Mink Car posts - Start Here
Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)
This is an interesting interpretation! Mine is a bit more figurative than literal. Instead of being physically hit by the mink car, I hear it as a play on "then it hit me."
The vibe of the song reminds me of 70s sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, an era that to me seemed full of forced positivity and jokes that spread a false veneer of happiness over grim reality. Amidst the disingenuous, peaceful, happy music we hear that he was hit by the mink car. Something hit him, and it was a violent realization that shook him.
He woke up, or came to the realization, that he was in a beautiful dream. Nice, but not reality. Wealth, symbolized by the car, silver chauffeur, diamond wig, etc., is often known to change relationships, where the wealthy no longer know if their friends are real or using them for their money. Despite the assurances of those around him that his feelings are all in his head, the singer realizes he is now alone, despite the beautiful things around him, and somewhere along the way he started to feel hollow inside.
Someone is reaching out for him, but her smile is also empty and meaningless. Perhaps she symbolizes those false friendships or shallow relationships? I interpret the "24-carat dead" line as being dead on the inside, having lost your soul/true self to the endless pursuit of or indulgence in the trappings of wealth.
I like your interpretation, too! I think both yours and mine boil down to the same idea that the idea of wealth is enticing, but ultimately meaningless. You can't take it with you when you die, and most people don't do anything actually helpful with it when they do have it.
I love the music but the lyrics bug my wife. The musical vibe is pretty specifically in the form of a Burt Bacharach production. The flugelhorn verse gives it away if nothing else does. The Bacharach and Hal David sound defined easy listening pop of the 60s and 70s through Dionne Warwick and other performers. Austin Powers and Elvis Costello brought him back to the young public view and ear in the 90s, and Costello's '98 album with Bacharach called Painted From Memory is a lovely,bittersweet hour spent in that musical mode as pretty much every song, no matter how happily romantic it sounds, is about infidelity, breaking up, cruelty, or just good memories that make the present pains sting even more. On "Mink Car" the Johns one-up that lyrical approach with their surreal calamity. I wonder if Flansburgh's auto-involved injury of a few years ago gives this song any new poignancy if they play it live. (Is it included in their Mink Car-focused sets?) And I hope Linnell meant that the two of them were working like Lerner and Loewe rather than Leopold and Loeb!