No!

They Might Be Giants wrote a 90-second song about the word "no." This is about the three different no's I learned as a kid and which one turned out to be the only one that mattered.

Aug 07, 2026

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Cartoon album cover for "No!" by They Might Be Giants. Four children stand against a yellow patterned background, arms outstretched with motion lines. a girl with red pigtails, a boy in a red jacket, a robot boy with metallic features, and a boy with brown hair. all appearing startled or mid-exclamation. A large speech bubble in the center reads "NO!" in bold black letters, flanked by smaller bubbles spelling out "They Might Be Giants." — The album cover, for No! from They Might Be Giants: four cartoon kids, one speech bubble

I’m using voice-to-text while driving to work with a headache from bad air quality drifting over to Tacoma from the Spokane fires. You won’t be able to tell but every other word is followed by coughing. I was never a smoker but I have cigars sometimes, and I know that burning-garbage taste the morning after.

That’s what I woke up with after falling asleep with a fan in my window while the poisonous air came to town overnight. I mention this only because it’s the condition I was in when I started thinking about today’s song, which feels appropriate for a song called No! That’s the exact word that came out of my ash-tasting mouth when I woke up today.

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