Cyclops Rock
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Cyclops Rock |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Mink Car, Special Mink Car Sampler, Tracks Taken From The New Album 'Mink Car', Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, A User's Guide To They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity, Podcast 53 |
| year | 2001 |
| first played | March 4, 1999 (398 known performances) |
| run time | 2:38 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh; Cerys Matthews screams the bridge |
Trivia/Info
- From A Song-By-Song Drive-Through Of Mink Car with John and John: "This is the story of a fellow who feels betrayed and beaten by a relationship, but is surviving. He compares himself to Chuckie [sic], from the Child's Play movies. The shocking chant at the end is delivered by Cerys, the singer from UK hitmakers Catatonia."
- As the "Song-By-Song Drive-Through" description says, the guest singer featured on the bridge is Cerys Matthews. In a 2013 Tumblr post, Flansburgh would elaborate on the selection of Ms. Matthew, saying:
We were working on the track with Clive Langer and Alan Wynstanley in London. We had done a very finished version of the song already and Clive was looking to open the arrangement up. Clive has a very lively imagination about how an arrangement and a production of a song can travel—people peg us as being a bit manic with [our] song structures but I think we’re Trappist monks compared to what is going on in Clive’s mind. ANYWAY—he wanted to shake the song up add even more mania to an already manic track. I had the kind of scream/chant idea that seemed better for an outside voice. Clive and Alan had worked with Cerys Matthews, and clearly loved her to pieces. When she arrived at the session she was clearly a very magnetic personality, and she dove into her brief moment in the track as if it was life and death. Nothing had to be conjured out of her. She just exploded and it was perfect, crazy and finished.
- However, the initial idea was to have Joe Strummer of The Clash to sing the bridge. "We were gonna get Joe Strummer to do a chant section, but we finished before that could happen" explained Flansburgh.[1]
- Flansburgh explained the creation of the song in a 2002 interview: [2]
I had written the verses and the chorus, and instead of making the demo just by myself, as a songwriter's demo, I brought in Danny Weinkauf to open things up. And he came in and created the riff that not only became the bass line, but also ended up being the guitar solo.
- In a 2003 interview, Flansburgh said of the song: "This is the story of a fellow who feels betrayed and beaten by a relationship, but is surviving. He compares himself to Chucky, from the Child's Play movies."
- The demo of the song had the line "I'm sick, like Chucky was sick" as "I'm sick, like Nixon was sick." When asked in a 2019 Tumblr post about the change, Flansburgh said: "I can’t say it was a strong impulse. I think maybe Chucky seemed more universal and broadly horrifying, where as the Nixon mention kind of pulled the lyric off the main topic into some political thing."
- The versions of the song featured on Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants and A User's Guide To They Might Be Giants is 4 seconds longer than the version on Mink Car, filled with extra guitar noises.
- The song I'm Sick (Of This American Life) from a year earlier cannibalizes multiple lyrics of the song such as "I didn't come here to socialize" and "I like staring at two glass eyes." In Flansburgh Writes About "They Got Lost", Flansburgh said that the reason was "probably because they were sitting around at the moment."
- The E-card video for the song was likely inspired by The Residents, an experimental rock band that is known for hiding their identities behind giant eyeball masks. The band has referenced them multiple times before and after.
- The alternate channels 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the E-card show cyclops versions of Barney, Miss Eyemarica, 20/20, a cop show and a western, respectively.
- This song was briefly featured in the season 7 premiere of reality TV competition The Masked Singer in March 2022 as entrance music for a singer in a cyclops outfit.
Song Themes
Altered Voice, Artificial Body Parts, Body Parts, Children, Cities, Dancing, Eyes, Food, Freaks, Friendship, Geography, I've Got A, Lists, Loneliness, Love Gone Sour, Mind Control, Hypnotism, Misanthropy, Movies, Music, Mythology, New York City, Non-John Vocals, Numbers, People (Imaginary), Poison, Problems With Liner Notes, Recycled Material, Screaming, Self-Reference, Swear Words, Transportation
Videos
- Watch the TMBG E-Card from tmbg.com
Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. Cyclops Rock is currently ranked #319 out of 1114. (197 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.60) |
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