The Mesopotamians
From This Might Be A Wiki
From John Linnell: "These are the first two drawings [David Cowles] sent us after he heard ["The Mesopotamians"]. The Ed "Big Daddy" Roth guy immediately won us over."[1]
| song name | The Mesopotamians |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | The Else, Podcast 28B, They Might Be Highlights From The Else, Them Ain't Big Eye Ants, Idlewild, 50,000,000 They Might Be Giants Songs Can't Be Wrong |
| year | 2007 |
| first played | May 3, 2007 (507 known performances) |
| run time | 2:57 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- This song and its music video feature the fictional band The Mesopotamians, whose four band members, Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh are all named after famous Mesopotamians. The characters were first conceived by John Linnell, who had an idea to write about The Mesopotamians in the form of a children's picture book similar to Bed, Bed, Bed and Kids Go![2]:
[An idea] I had which led to "The Mesopotamians" was that it would be all these characters from ancient Middle-Eastern mythology who would all be in a band together. So that was the idea, just a book that has a bunch of songs that was like, I don't know if you're familiar with The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands, but that was one that John [Flansburgh] and I loved that actually spawned some hit singles. This was a kind of similar thing: "Oh yeah, let's have this band. They're called The Mesopotamians." There was going to be a bunch of songs about each character. But that didn't come to pass, the book was never made. I eventually picked up the demo and kind of reworked it into the version that we ended up with.
- John Linnell elaborated more on the original concept in a 2013 interview with the Rumpus, of which the demo of the song was first released:
There was originally going to be the Monkees-like theme song and then individual songs for each character, and the arrangements were going to reflect the instrumentation of the band. I had an autoharp sitting on my workbench at the time so one of the members was going to play that. I think Gilgamesh was supposed to be female and she had a song about wanting (as did her namesake) to live forever, but I grew disenchanted with the idea of drawing so directly from the original myths.
- In the same interview, Linnell admitted to the song's resemblance to the Philip Roth novel The Great American Novel, "which is about a mythical baseball league with players named things like Gil Gamesh."
- When discussing the impact of the Iraq War and the George W. Bush administration on writing for The Else in a 2015 interview with Spin, Linnell said: "Weirdly, 'The Mesopotamians,' which is a happy song, is specifically about Iraq but in a completely background, working around way. It was very of the time."
- The Mesopotamians would later be developed visually by David Cowles, who was reassigned by John Flansburgh from "Zeroes" to direct a music video for the song[3]. For the characters' designs, Cowles took inspiration from a children's picture book about Mesopotamia at a library, while he was specifically instructed by Flansburgh to make the video itself look messy, keeping as much of the aspects from the rough lines and sketches as possible[4]:
[Flansburgh] was saying how [between] the roughness of the storyboards and the final product, something gets lost sometimes. So I made a point of not putting paper under my hands so that they would smear everything, and I had my son come up with a bunch of stain [textures] that we could use throughout the video.
- The music video was first teased in two short videos posted on theymightbegiants.com. The first, entitled "Mesopotamians Now", was posted on July 30, 2007 featuring a clip from the music video with dialog sampled from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. The second video, entitled "After the Audition" was posted on August 24, 2007, which sampled dialog from The Monkees TV series episode "Find The Monkees (The Audition)", which first aired in 1967. The music video, directed by David Cowles and animated by Chris Timmons, debuted on stereogum.com on October 2, 2007. Timmons had previously worked with Cowles on a dropped pilot for Playhouse Disney in 2006 titled Skitterville.
- In various interviews, both Linnell and Flansburgh have praised Cowles' approach to directing "The Mesopotamians" music video[5], with Linnell saying: "[Cowles] recognized that the song needed to sprout hair and smell more like B.O."[6] In a 2012 Tumblr ask, Flansburgh said that "The Mesopotamians" was his favourite They Might Be Giants music video, alongside "Electric Car" and "Meet The Elements"[7].
- Before the release of the music video, The Mesopotamians first appeared on a t-shirt added to the TMBG Shop on July 10, 2007 to coincide with The Else's CD release.
- Both the song and the music video contain various potential references to material related to both the Beatles and the Monkees:
- Linnell has cited the song to be a theme song similar to the theme from The Monkees[8]. This theme song was also an inspiration behind "We're The Replacements"[9].
- The bridge lyrics "I thought that you were dead, I thought you crashed your car / No, man, I've been right here this whole time playing bass guitar" may refer to the rumor that Paul McCartney, bass guitarist of the Beatles, had died in a car accident in 1966 and was secretly replaced in the Beatles by a look-alike, believed to have been named William Sheppard.
- A scene in the music video[10] references the cover art for the Beatles' 1964 album, Meet the Beatles!, with the cover being directly parodied in a t-shirt design.
- The Mesopotamians' arm-link walk in the music video[11] may be a reference to the arm-link walk seen in the season 2 opening of The Monkees TV series.
- The Mesopotamians would return 19 years after their debut in a music video animated by David Cowles for They Might Be Giants' cover of Raspberries' "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)", which was released on YouTube on March 31, 2026 as the fourth preview track from The World Is To Dig.
- Much like The Mesopotamians, They Might Be Giants toured during the Lincoln and Flood era in two white Ford Econoline vans, dubbed "Milli" and "Vanilli". Sargon in the music video also plays the guitar left-handed, just like Flansy.
- Hammurabi was considered to be featured on a monster calendar (which later evolved into The Escape Team) for the 2018 Instant Fan Club, but he was ultimately not chosen. He was depicted riding on top of the Econoline van, just like in the music video, and was referred to as "Hum", a combination of his name and Hummer, a defunct brand of pickup trucks and SUVs.[12]
- They Might Be Giants performed this song on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2009, one week before the show's final episode, making it the last of several TMBG appearances on the show.
- A Mohenjo-daren is someone from Mohenjo-daro, a city belonging to an ancient civilization in modern-day Pakistan that was contemporaneous with Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
- The music video for "The Mesopotamians" is the most popular video on the ParticleMen YouTube channel, amassing 5.1 million views as of 2026.
Song Themes
Accidents, Canon, Death, Food, Hair, History, Music, People (Real), Religion, Supernatural, Swear Words, This Town, Trade Names, Transportation, Weather
Videos
- Watch it on
- The Mesopotamians official music video - Watch it on - Live performance on Late Night with Craig Ferguson.
- Watch it on - TMBGs last East coast performance on Conan O'Brien
- Watch it on - The Mesopotamians teaser: "Mesopotamians Now"
- Watch it on - The Mesopotamians teaser: "After the Audition"
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