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Fingertips

From This Might Be A Wiki
song name Fingertips
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Apollo 18, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants
year 1992
first played November 2, 2000 (406 known performances)
run time 4:34
sung by John Linnell & John Flansburgh; additional vocals by Peter Stampfel, Nicholas Hill, Elma Mayer, Brian Dewan and Amy Allison

Trivia/Info

  • Fingertips is actually a collection of 21 short (mostly 5 to 20 second) songs. See the full tracklisting at the page for Apollo 18.
  • Quotes from John Linnell:
'Fingertips' was one of those really worked-out things, in some ways like a logical extension of what we've been doing all along. It's hyper-arranged, practically that's what it is, an arrangement. All the little bits are extremely short and melodic. So it's a lot like everything else we've done, only even more so ... the apogee of one of our orbits.
The project was to write a bunch of choruses and nothing else. In other words, I had to restrain myself from writing any other parts of the songs. I wanted a collection of choruses that's something like what you see on TV late at night, like that old K-Tel commercials. I was thinking about how you know a lot of songs from these ads, but the only part you know is maybe one line, which is half the chorus. And yet they stick in your head in the way a whole song would. in a way, these tiny chips of songs seem complete, because you don't know the rest of the song. (from In Their Own Words)
  • According to the liner notes, Apollo 18 is "meant" to be listened to on shuffle, which means that the pieces of "Fingertips" get scattered among the other songs on the album when you listen to it.
  • On the UK version of the album, "Fingertips" is all one track instead of being divided into verses, so Brits are unable to experience the shuffling joy. "Fingertips" is also a single track on the Dial-A-Song compilation.
  • This song was first performed in its entirety on November 2, 2000 at the Bowery Ballroom, and has been a staple of the band's live show since. Individual snippets of the song have been performed going back to 1992.
  • A project to 'flesh out' each Fingertip into whole songs was done by a band called They Might Be Gannets. It's available as a download here.
  • The title "Fingertips" may be a reference to The Residents' Commercial Album, which included a track named "Fingertips;" the album itself was a collection of 40 one-minute jingle-like song fragments. Considering TMBG's Residential influence (especially evident on "Indian Ocean"), the reference is more than possible.

Song Themes

Accidents, Altered Voice, Body Parts, Colors, Death, Fire, Food, Friendship, Funny But Sad, Guy Songs, I Am, Kingdom Of Loathing Reference, Loneliness, Love, Me, Misanthropy, Non-John Vocals, Not In 4-4 Time, Questions, Strangers, Transportation, Violence, Weather, Windows, Yes

Videos

Available for Purchaseedit

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Amazon
 MP3 99¢ Purchase!
eMusic
 MP3 49¢ Purchase!
iTunes
 AAC 99¢ Purchase!
TMBG Merch Store
 MP3
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Free Downloads

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TMBG Free Tunes
 MP3
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Current Rating

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Fingertips is currently ranked #83 out of 710. (79 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.96)
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