Mr. Me

Charting the whimsical yet profoundly sad world of 'Mr. Me' by TMBG, as I navigate its nautical themes, emotional depth, and personal impact.

Photo by Artem Verbo on Unsplash

This song is so important to me that I actually sat at the bar in my favorite ramen spot and wrote out an outline to be sure I didn’t leave anything out. Now that I’m starting to write this, I worry that following the outline will make this feel too formulaic and less real.

This leads me to wonder, have I been considering this entire time that my writing is real and authentic? Don’t let me know what you think in the comments. Needless to say, Mr. Me is a no-skip banger worth belting out every single time I hear it. I want this song played at my funeral wake.

This post is going to really dig into the song, “Mr. Me” by They Might Be Giants. A tune filled with child-like whimsy, fun. and happy melodies that is undoubtedly about - you guessed it - being sad. John Linnell is heading up the lead vocals on this with John Flansburgh providing the extra oomph and the melodies flow beautifully with razor wit and cleverness throughout.

Nautical Notes and Narrative Nuances

Leaning heavily into a nautical theme without on-the-nose tropes like a ship’s bell or or fog horns, but rather musical bits that evoke the feeling of being out at sea. During the verse, Flansburgh is humming a sliding octave scale over a flowing according that all ends with a guitar chord tremolo. Listening with closed eyes and open imagination, the listener is left feeling as though you are riding waves out at sea that end with a crashing splash. Intentional or not, that is how I experience it.

All of this happy-go-lucky nautical music is juxtapositioning (definitely not a real word) the profound sadness felt by the subject of this song, a boy named Mr. Me. I think TMBG are not singing about the literal sea here. The ocean waters are referring to Life. Being out at sea is just existing in the world and existing is full of unfathomable mystery. Thank you. With this in mind, read this opening line from the song after listening to the sample below.

Once a boy named Mr. Me bemoaned a great regret: "I've floundered in the misty sea but can't abide its mystery I wound up sad, you bet.”

Being no stranger to meta-narration myself (see just about anything I write over on succulentsandcactuses.com), I think the song is coming from the point of the narrator referring himself in an utmost clever way, by saying the song is about about a person named Mr. Me. That is to say, himself.

“Since I was a boy, I struggled with existence. I could not accept its unknowable nature and trying to navigate those waves just plunged me into deep depression.” Later, it goes on. . .

So take the hand of Mister Me and, mister, make him glad To swim the Mister Misty Sea and cease the Mister Mystery That, mister, made him sad.

Here the narrator is singing out for someone to take his hand and make him glad to be alive. Rescue him from the existential dread that has made him so sad.

A personal voyage with Mr. Me

My first listen to Mr.Me was on my futon in the solitude of my downstairs bedroom nestled in a cul-de-sac deep within Spanaway, WA. I didn’t yet have the quantity is topics for which to assign my difficult feelings of unkowable dread but the feelings were lurking and I didn’t understand why. Mr. Me reached out to me through the detachable speakers of my mostly plastic bedroom stereo. The plea for someone to take Mr. Me’s hand did in effect, take mine and help me feel glad, while listening, to be alive.

There are a couple versions of this song that I also love dearly and wanted to share below. The first is with a full brass band and the other is from the Lincoln demo tapes which has my version percussion. I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or feelings about Mr. Me or the versions below in the comments. You can also DM or reply by email if that’s how you are reading this. Is it weird that I have such an emotional take on this song?