They Might Be Giants (Boy!)

Some bands chase trends.  Others chase hits.  They Might Be Giants chase after being themselves and let the music happen.For more than four decades, John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been building a strange musical universe where songs can be about night lights, dead presidents, particle physics, palindromes, or the quiet existential panic of everyday life—and somehow still get stuck in your head for the rest of the week.Emerging from the New York underground in the 1980s, the duo first made their mark with drum machines, accordion, and an approach to songwriting that treated pop music like a playground.  Their early “Dial-A-Song” project let fans call a phone number and hear new recordings long before the internet made that sort of thing normal.  Since then, they’ve written everything from cult radio favorites to television themes, children’s science albums, and songs that manage to be funny, unsettling, and oddly profound.In this episode, we discuss the world of Linnell and Flansburgh: the songs, the stories, the strange corners of their catalog, and why a band that refuses to stay in one lane has managed to stay relevant for so long.