I'm Impressed

From This Might Be A Wiki
YouTube
Music video for "I'm Impressed"
A still from the video
Myspace artwork for the song

song name I'm Impressed
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Radio Sampler '07, The Else, I'm Impressed (Promo), They Might Be Highlights From The Else, Them Ain't Big Eye Ants, Idlewild
year 2007
first played May 3, 2007 (92 known performances)
run time 2:39
sung by John Linnell


Trivia/Info

  • This track was not produced by The Dust Brothers, "but it reflects working with [them]," according to Linnell. "It sounds like it belongs on this record as opposed to a record from a few years ago."
  • In a 2007 interview[1] on The Bob Edwards Show, Linnell admitted that the song is political, and mentioned that the Iraq War fit with the song's themes. He stated: "I think it sort of reaches through history. It's just about the strong man in general."
  • In a 2008 interview with Electronic Musician, Linnell and Flansburgh discussed their collaboration on this song and the reason for the distortion on the vocals:

JL: Here's a sort of happy way that we collaborated on the last record. One example is I sent my demo of the first track, “I'm Impressed,” to John. I emailed it to him.
JF: MP3. Really lo-fi MP3.
JL: At some point I gave John the OMF, which just has the vocal and the drum reference and the chords. He took that and constructed a whole new track just behind the vocal. So he basically created a completely new track based on what I'd given him. Then we [brought] the OMF to Pat Dillett.
JF: Although what's funny is the vocal that's on the track is from the MP3. If you wonder how we capture that really crummy sound, it is that familiar sound of kind of a low-res MP3.

  • The video was directed by Rob Shaw at Bent Image Lab. It won a gold plaque at the 2008 Chicago International Film Festival.
  • From the Vimeo description: "In an early section of the video you'll notice soldier robots popping out of paper sheets and folding themselves into three dimensional shapes. This was actually how each robot was made. Rob Shaw created a design with which he could print out paper cut outs of each robot, which would then be folded into the characters."

Song Themes

Animals, Body Parts, Falling, Forgetting And Remembering, Hands, Heads, In Back, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, Supernatural, Traded Tracks, War, Military, Weather

Videos

  • Watch it on Youtube.png
  • Watch it on Vimeo.png - full resolution
  • Watch it on Youtube.png – Recorded live on May 16, 2007

Current Rating

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I'm Impressed is currently ranked #77 out of 1005. (184 wikians have given it an average rating of 9.01)