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Road Movie To Berlin

From This Might Be A Wiki
song nameRoad Movie to Berlin
artistThey Might Be Giants
releasesFlood
year1990
first playedSep. 28, 1988 (51 known performances)
run time2:22
sung byJohn Flansburgh

Trivia/Info

This song was actually written back when the Berlin Wall seemed like something that would actually never go down. It's weird. It's really a dated—I feel like it's actually sort of a topical—like, you know, pulling out my anti-Vietnam song. You know, it was written at a time when it was just obvious that the Berlin Wall was gonna be there forever. So, it's kind of strangely dated.
  • Flansburgh later stated in an interview with Rolling Stone:
    This song was designed to feel like a fragment of some bar room song just starting up again and again. Even though the verses resolve, there is a little bit of tension that is left hanging each go around, and that hopefully is a bit more unsettling with each verse. My voice is slowed down, which is kind of creepy.
  • "There were a bunch of alternate lyrics written, but it didn't seem like the song should be that long." - John Flansburgh on the additional lyrics in the liner notes, from the tmbg.com FAQ archives. However, he later said in Rolling Stone that the verse was "inadvertently left out." Sometimes these alternate lyrics are used live.
  • Covered by Frank Black on the the TMBG tribute album Hello Radio: The Songs Of They Might Be Giants.
  • The chord progression of the song uses every note of the chromatic scale.

Song Themes

Cities, Death, Drinking, Drinking Glasses, German, Kingdom Of Loathing Reference, Movies, Problems with Liner Notes, Religion, Supernatural, Time, Transportation

Videos

 
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Road Movie To Berlin is currently ranked #260 out of 858. (158 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.59)
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