#creativeperseverance

I was listening to They Might Be Giants’ There’s Only One Everything with my daughter and husband. I felt a wave of warm well-being rush over me. The song is from a “kid’s” album that the Giants, John Flansburgh and John Linnell, made about math. The curiosity shown in the immensely catchy, musically interesting songs appeal to people of all ages.  Michael (#22) called the album, “The Pixar movie of music--kids and adults love them the same. That’s REALLY hard to do.” 

There is so much to celebrate about TMBG. Of course there is their great early work, which I loved. But there’s more than just clever, off-beat pop to celebrate and two things stand out for me. One is their Here Comes Science album, another of their kids’ albums, which came out in 2009. It asserts in such a positive way that, in the words of its first track, “Science is Real.” I love the idea that parents across the country can use this as a fun way to introduce their kids to scientific curiosity. 

The second is Dial-a-song. From 1986 to 2003, TMBG’s massive imagination could not be contained by performance and record output. They had so many songs in their heads they wanted to get out that they started recording them on an answering machine in Brooklyn. They advertised the number in fliers and newspapers. They would record new songs almost every day, and thousands of people called in and got to hear early versions of songs that might end up on albums, or just little bits of songs that stay just as they are. Flansburgh and Linnell brought back Dial-a-Song earlier this year. Check out the latest.