Robert Lowell

From This Might Be A Wiki

song name Robert Lowell
artist They Might Be Giants
releases They Might Be Giants Vs. McSweeney's (as "I Am 40: Memories of West St. and Lepke"), TMBG Unlimited - January, DialASong.com (2000-2006), TMBG Clock Radio, Podcast 51
year 2000
run time 3:17
sung by John Flansburgh


Trivia/Info

  • From TMBG Unlimited:
This song was recorded with the Elegant Too, who we are also working with on a couple of tracks with Mike Doughty from Soul Coughing slated for our next rock album. This recording will be part of the McSweeney's literary magazine "Art and Music" issue to which we'll be contributing a number of new tracks especially recorded to correspond to artwork or writings of other contributors. The lyrics of this song are almost entirely from the poem Memories of West Street and Lepke by Robert Lowell (although they have been 'recontextualized' by TMBG for rock music purposes).
  • John Flansburgh on the writing process of this song for McSweeney's:
There was a piece on the poet Robert Lowell, but rather than take a poem and put it to song I thought we could grab fragments of his most colorful lines and create a more abstract feeling track. Ultimately, since it is so disconnected from line to line, it might seem like a 'cut-up' lyric—but his work (at least to me) feels so personal and so in that time there is a certain consistency of tone that still sticks to the words even when jumbled up the way we jumbled it.

Song Themes

Age, Colors, People (Real), Poetry, Reading

Videos

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Robert Lowell is currently ranked #269 out of 1005. (30 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.64)