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Fingertips

From This Might Be A Wiki
song nameFingertips
artistThey Might Be Giants
albumApollo 18, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants
year1992
first playedNov. 2, 2000 (307 known performances)
run time4:33
sung byJohn Linnell & John Flansburgh; additional vocals by Peter Stampfel, Nicholas Hill, Elma Mayer, Brian Dewan and Amy Allison

[edit] Trivia/Info

  • Fingertips is actually a collection of 21 short (mostly 10 to 20 second) songs. See the full tracklisting at the page for Apollo 18.
  • According to 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."
  • 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, New York, NY, although snippets of the song have been performed going back to 1992.
  • Available as one track on iTunes, but the track is labeled "Fingertips 1: Everything is Catching on Fire".
  • An extremely odd 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.
  • Similarly, Kittysneezes did a weekly fiction project, writing a short story based on each of the Fingertips. The full run can be found here.
  • The title "Fingertips" may be a reference to The Residents' album The 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"), it is likely to be the source of the idea.

[edit] Song Themes

Accidents, Colors, Food, Friendship, Loneliness, Love, Me, Misanthropy, Non-John Vocals, Questions, Transportation, Violence

[edit] Videos

 
Current Rating
Fingertips is currently ranked #50 out of 797. (276 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.99)
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