Review: Why? - They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants have been making clever and subversive pop music for more than 30 years. Late last year, they released their second album of 2015, but this one is for kids of all ages.

In the year 2002, They Might Be Giants did something thought to be a little crazy - they released an album for kids. That record, titled No!, was both a commercial and critical success, and sent the band down an unanticipated path as part-time kids’ music superstars. They then released 3 themed albums through Disney -- one each about letters numbers and science -- while continuing to make music for adults. If you’ve paid any attention to kids music over the past decade, you certainly have run across the band.

Six years after that last kids’ record, the band returned in late 2015 with a new kids’ music album. Free of a Disney collection, the new album is a spirited, free-form follow-up to No! appropriately titled Why?.

On the song “Out of a Tree,” everybody thinks it’s a disaster that an 8-year-old has gotten stuck in a tree... everyone, that is, except the adventurous 8-year-old himself. And while the album doesn’t have a specific theme, many songs celebrate kids’ independent streaks. Of course, sometimes that leads to decisions that aren’t the wisest in retrospect.

Despite the frustration the parent of such a kid might experience, a song like “Definition of Good” shows that sometimes moments of random curiosity spark warm family memories.

The freeform nature of the roughly 40-minute album makes it a little more difficult to nail down a specific target age range, but I'd peg it at about ages 4-10.

Many of the people the band sings about or to on this album question authority and explore the world in messy ways, coming up with answers to new questions. That attitude is useful for not only 30-year-old rock bands but also much younger listeners -- it’s what helps give me hope that the world’s problems can be tackled head-on.

They Might Be Giants - photo by Shervin Lainez

Interview: John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants)

Longtime readers will know my affinity for They Might Be Giants. The band's been a part of my life for thirty years now, from their early work in the '80s through their first family album No! in 2002 to three more albums with Disney (Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123s, and Here Comes Science). They've done tons more, constantly experimenting with audiences and ways to get their music in front of audiences -- this year, for example, they've released a song and video a week on their new (or old, seeing as it was once just a telephone answering machine) Dial-A-Song website.

After taking a few years off from recording music for a younger audience, the band is back with their fifth album for families, titled Why?. It's every bit as brilliant as their first four kids' albums, and as you might guess from the title, the album's got more than its fair share of songs about or from the perspective of kids who don't necessarily follow the straight and narrow. (For both good and... less than good.)

TMBG guitarist John Flansburgh (that's him on the right in the picture above) recently answered a few questions about his own level of disobedience growing up, the process of making the album, and whether more kids' albums are in the band's future.

There are some songs on the album about misbehaving -- or at least very independent -- kids. Were you a bad kid, good kid, or somewhere in between growing up?

There is a lot of misbehaving on this one! So me? I didn’t get into much trouble, although I was a terrible student. As a kid, like a lot of kids, I was pretty manic and had no ability to concentrate unless it involved the radio, old movies, the counter-culture, pop music, cameras or tape recorders. Fortunately, in high school, John and I had great friends and we all kind of hid from the rest of the school together, working on the newspaper and doing a lot of creative projects for fun. All those relationships were really important to me and very formative.

How has it felt as a songwriter to have more relative freedom in not having an album around a loose theme (as on the “Here Comes” albums)?

It was great! It's easy just to write songs for entertainment and not worry about those pesky facts!

Having said that, was there a theme or idea you had running through your head as you were writing and selecting songs for the album?

Well, we’re coming off three educationally-driven projects for Disney and each topic automatically suggested a lot material. With the Why? album we are getting back to writing songs that just work on their own unreasonable terms and that feels different and liberating.

The amount of writing that’s been required of us in the past 15 months has been extraordinary and slightly crazy— 60 songs or so have been finished, with a bunch of smoldering wrecks of abandoned half-songs. I really can barely remember the selection process with so many weeks on deadline for Dial-A-Song. It’s kind of been just one big musical slalom ride. We just work as hard and as fast as possible in every direction.

Were there songs that you released through Dial-A-Song that you didn’t expect to put on “Why?” that, because of fans’ reactions, you subsequently decided to include on the album?

It would have been interesting to use Dial-A-Song as a beta-tester, but everything has to be planned out so many months in advance. We’ve tried to only include songs from Why? on Dial-A-Song that would also scan as suitable for adults. This is where the educational thing would have really gotten in the way, but with the Why? songs it’s been okay. A song like "Hello Mrs. Wheelyke" is probably a good example of how a song can work both ways.

But there was a moment that our intentions were not so clear just between me and John; during the creation of one track called "Thinking Machine" we did some file trading long distance and without a lot of conversation. It flowed like this: I put together the beat, John added a bass line and handed off some words, I sang them and put together a chorus, and then John sang the “answers.” And when we were done it was revealed that through the whole process John thought we were working on a kids song and I thought it was very clearly for adults. I don’t even know how it never came up, but it just happened like that.

How do you decide when you want someone else, such as your wife Robin Goldwasser, to sing lead vocals (be it on this album or generally)?

Really it is the vibe of the song that suggests it to us. “Oh You Did” has a dialogue set up in the song between Robin and me and John (in the role of the misbehavers). It’s exciting to hear a different voice on a song. Robin has a beautiful voice, but for TMBG I think her secret weapon is that she can subtly add character to her voice that really works with our material. On the kids albums she often is playing the “kind lady” which has an official, traditional kids music vibe. But she’s also sung kids parts on a bunch of the Disney themes and did a much brassier turn on the Dr. Evil song in the Austin Powers movie. We’re taking full advantage of her versatility.

What do you personally get out of making music for kids (is that different from the rest of your musical output)?

It’s very free and a pretty happy kind of writing. I think John pointed out that kids have no cultural reference points for music — all songs are all new to them and keeping that in mind is a very liberating headspace to write from. We were never a hit-making band although everyone we worked with thought we should be and that definitely made us self-conscious. Looking back I can’t believe how far we actually got in that straight rock world. We were also closely watched and critiqued by rock critics. It’s nice to just leave that all behind and just make stuff up.

Do you hope to make more kids’ albums in the future?

Absolutely.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Intro to Kindie: Laurie Berkner

In my Intro to Kindie series, I've focused thus far on people who've had the opportunity to listen to thousands (if not tens of thousands) of kids music songs to try to select the twenty or so songs that would serve as a good introduction to kids music for the 21st century listener.

That's meant that my respondents thus far (and in the future) have not been musicians, but radio folks and others who've made it their job or hobby to listen to 250 or more albums per year.

But there are a handful of musicians I'm planning to feature here, musicians whose appreciation of the history and modern context of kids music rivals (or supersedes) that of folks like me.

Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs album cover

So I'm tickled pink to have kids music superstar Laurie Berkner be the first musician to offer her own list of twenty songs to introduce to the kids' music newbie. Berkner's on a roll at the momeny -- just this week, for example, Simon & Schuster announced that they'd be publishing three picture books in 2017 and 2018 -- but most importantly for the purposes of this particular exercise, her latest album, Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs, is set for release next week. It's a 2-CD, 57-track (!) set that features 51 traditional children's songs plus six "bonus" tracks of Berkner's own songs that could easily join those traditional songs.

I love all these lists, and Berkner's is no exception, with a wonderful introduction kicking things off.

For me, the songs that really represent an artist or a genre are the ones that move me. They might make my body move, move me to laughter or move me to tears, but they affect me deeply in some way. All of the songs that I've chosen as an introduction to kids' music have some element that I think is moving, as well as being representative of the ever-expanding world of kids' music. Some of these songs are for very young children, some are for kids already in school, some are more for the parents, but to me most of them have a lovely sense of something joyful or beautiful, and often it's from the child's perspective.

It goes without saying that there are now so many wonderful musicians making great music for families that it would have been impossible to put them all on this list. Instead I just tried to include a sampling of music more recently written along with music that has stood the test of time. "Sammy" by Hap Palmer is an exquisitely written song that made me cry as a kid, with a message that I still appreciate as an adult. "I am a Paleontologist" is only one amazing song of many by They Might Be Giants. I happen to think this one is genius in the way it combines content that is truly of interest to kids with a super catchy chorus and a sound that hints enough at crunchy guitar rock to tickle parents.

Brady Rymer's "Jump Up (It's a Good Day)" is a song that really moves me to jump and just makes me feel happy every time I hear it. I only included one song from a musical because I think that music is easier to discover without much research, but I think that many amazing kids' songs come from that genre (I could do an entire list made up of songs exclusively performed by Julie Andrews). I also couldn't help myself, but as a bonus 21st track, I included Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" because even though he didn't put it on a kids' album, Simon wrote it for his own son. I sang it to my daughter for years, and I think it's one of those songs that takes on deep meaning only once you become a parent.

Here are my 20 (OK, 21) bits of kids' music pleasure, in no particular order. Enjoy!

"Jump Up (It's a Good Day)" - Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could

"Roller Coaster" - Kira Willey

"Pop Fly"- Justin Roberts

"Spoonful of Sugar" - from Mary Poppins

"I am a Paleontologist" - They Might Be Giants (with Danny Weinkauf)

"Family Time" - Ziggy Marley

"Daddy-O" - Frances England

"Sammy" - Hap Palmer

"Glad To Have A Friend Like You" - Free To Be You And Me/Marlo Thomas and Friends

"Go Down Emmanuel Road" - Dan Zanes

"Good Morning My Love" - Vered

"The Garden Song" - Arlo Guthrie

"Upside Down" - Jack Johnson

"John The Rabbit" - Elizabeth Mitchell

"All These Shapes" - The Pop-Ups

"Music Everywhere" - The Dirty Sock Funtime Band

"Fly Birdy Fly" - Choo Choo Soul

"Walking With Spring" - The Okee Dokee Brothers

"The Marvelous Toy" - Tom Paxton

"Suppertime" - The Verve Pipe

"St. Judy's Comet" - Paul Simon

Photo credit: Jayme Thornton

They Might Be Giants' Why? - The Complete Guide

As I am a longtime They Might Be Giants fan, you might expect that I'd be eagerly awaiting the arrival of Why?, the forthcoming kids music album from band, their fifth and first since 2009.

You'd be completely right.

They've been incredibly busy since 2009, of course, and I've enjoyed a lot of that output, but this is a kids music website, and I'm a kids music expert. So the news of Why?'s impending release on November 27 (2015, for those of you reading from THE FUTURE) is a big deal here at Zooglobble HQ.

News that the band would be releasing a kids' album wasn't news to members to the band's 2015 Dial-A-Song project, for which the band has released a song (and accompanying video) once per week all year. Most of the songs thus far have been for adults -- or, at least, not for Why? -- but a handful of tracks have had more of a youthful flair. At the time of this initial writing, the band hasn't released a track listing, but here are the list of songs we know to be confirmed on the album (via press releases, album preorder pages, and the like) and their accompanying YouTube videos. Enjoy! [Update: Now that the album's available for pre-order on Amazon (affiliate link) -- and I've received a hard copy via my Instant Fan Club membership -- the track listing is public. So I've put a track listing here, with videos below.]

1. Oh You Did (w/ Robin Goldwasser)

2. Omnicorn

3. I Am Invisible

4. Definition of Good

5. And Mom and Kid

6. I Made a Mess

7. Moles, Hounds, Bears, Bees and Hares

8. Walking My Cat Named Dog

9. Or So I Have Read

10. Elephants (w/ Danny Weinkauf)

11. Long White Beard (w/ Robin Goldwasser)

12. I Just Want to Dance

13. Thinking Machine

14. So Crazy for Books

15. I Haven't Seen You in Forever

16. Out of a Tree

17. Hello Mrs. Wheelyke

18. Then the Kids Took Over

"Omnicorn" [Zooglobble link, YouTube link]

"I Am Invisible" [YouTube link]

"Definition of Good" [Zooglobble link, YouTube link]

"And Mom and Kid" [Zooglobble link (featuring an older video), YouTube link]

"I Made a Mess" [Zooglobble link, YouTube link]

"Moles, Hounds, Bears, Bees and Hares" [Zooglobble link, YouTube link]

"Walking My Cat Named Dog" [Zooglobble link, YouTube link]

"Or So I Have Read" [YouTube link via Spin]

"Elephants" (feat. Danny Weinkauf) [YouTube link]

"Long White Beard" (feat. Robin Goldwasser) [Vimeo link]

"I Haven't Seen You in Forever" [YouTube link]

"Out of a Tree" [YouTube link via the Wall Street Journal]

"Hello Mrs. Wheelyke" [YouTube link]

Video: "Moles, Hounds, Bears, Bees and Hares" - They Might Be Giants

Every couple weeks or so, They Might Be Giants release another video that might be on their upcoming kids' album Why?. Three weeks ago saw the release of the emoji-filled video for "Definition of Good" (confirmed to be on the album) and last night saw the release of "Moles, Hounds, Bears, Bees and Hares."

The song and video isn't quite the polar opposite of the bouncy "Definition," but its whimsical animation (which I believe is by Alison Cowles and her father, long-time TMBG collaborator David Cowles from Sandpiper Animation) is a perfect visual companion to the subdued stroll through select components of the animal kingdom.

"Some call them bunnies / Who cares?" - ha!

They Might Be Giants - "Moles, Hounds, Bears, Bees and Hares" [YouTube]

Video: "Definition of Good" - They Might Be Giants

Another week, another Dial-A-Song song and video that might be from the upcoming They Might Be Giants' kids album Why?. If "Definition of Good" doesn't warm your parental heart, then, well, you probably had a really frustrating morning getting the kids off to school.

Also: this is best viewed on a smartphone, I think. Most appropriately, in any case.

They Might Be Giants - "Definition of Good" [YouTube]