They Got Lost (Song)
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Illustration from the Long Tall Weekend liner notes
| song name | They Got Lost |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | The Complete Factory Showroom Sessions, Long Tall Weekend, They Got Lost, TMBG Clock Radio |
| year | 1996 |
| first played | March 7, 1996 (155 known performances) |
| run time | 4:39 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- Originally titled "They Might Be Giants Got Lost"[1], this song was recorded for Factory Showroom[2], but would not be chosen for inclusion on the album. In a 1996 interview with Cincinnati CityBeat, John Linnell would talk about the song's initial impact on audiences during their month-long residency at the Mercury Lounge, as well as the subject matter of the song[3]:
Some of the [new] songs [we performed] are in the tradition of the complicated, head-scratching type material that I think people will need to listen more than once to fully get into, but we've also got a couple of songs that went down well right away. One of them is called "They Might Be Giants Got Lost," and it's just a very explicit song about the band driving around in increasingly wide circles trying to get where they're going. It's pretty much straight autobiography. After we started playing this song, we realized that we pretty much get lost every single day on the road. We look at our directions and confidently start out, then find ourselves in some completely weird place trying to find a pay phone.
- A faster, live-only arrangement of the song was first released on Severe Tire Damage a year before the studio recording was officially released on Long Tall Weekend. This song was also re-released as a part of the They Got Lost rarities compilation in 2002, where John Flansburgh would comment on the track as a part of Flansburgh Writes About "They Got Lost" on tmbg.com:
Our title track is vibey tour-de-force of TMBG Mk II. Eric Schermerhorn and I worked out some nice interwoven guitar parts, and the lyric of the song is the universal touring band mantra.
- Flansburgh would also give a retrospective on the track in response to a Tumblr ask in 2012: "That song is a composite of 15 years of touring but will always be ultra-vivid to us. It's odd to think that getting lost on the road, like pay phones and fax machines, is probably mostly a thing of the past."
- "Julie at the Station" was former WFNX hostess Julie Kramer, who hosted the Leftover Lunch show that the band got lost going to. The third verse of the song also mentions They Might Be Giants' then-backing members Brian Doherty, Graham Maby and Eric Schermerhorn. In later live performances of the song, the names in the third verse were replaced with the names of the current band members.
- At 4:39, the studio recording of this song is the longest track included on any of TMBG's studio albums to date.
Song Themes
Different When Played Live, Escape, Funny But Sad, Letters Of The Alphabet, Music, Occupations, People (Real), Questions, Self-Reference, Size, This Town, Title Not In Lyrics, Transportation, Windows
Videos
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