Santa's Beard

From This Might Be A Wiki
Promotion from Bar/None[1]

song name Santa's Beard
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Lincoln, Lincoln Sampler, Then: The Earlier Years, They Might Be Giants In Holidayland, TMBG Clock Radio
year 1988
first played March 3, 1988 (35 known performances)
run time 1:55
sung by John Flansburgh, John Linnell harmonizes during the chorus


Trivia/Info

  • John Flansburgh, in The Gothamist, 2011, discussing researching titles before choosing one: "I remember when I found out there's a Beach Boys song called "Santa's Beard". I was really shocked."[2]
  • The title came from a Watchface performance piece called "Woolworth's", which was mentioned by John Linnell in "Everything Sticks Like A Broken Record", a track-by-track breakdown of the Lincoln album featured in Bandbox Issue #103:
They did a whole show about the store Woolworth's, and part of the show was reciting everything that you could buy in the Woolworth's, which was at the time this amazing miscellany of stuff. It was the kind of store where it wasn't just groceries or drugs or hardware. It was this vast array of things that you could get. I don't know why, but John and I were really struck by this part of the show where one of the characters just yells out "Santa beards!" as one of the things you could buy at Woolworth's. This woman was doing a gruff, Santa-sounding kind of voice and saying, "Santa beards!"
  • In 2019, in response to a fan's inquiry, Flansburgh stated that many of Lincoln's sound effects came from "the stock sounds in the studio's Akai S1000. I suspect that really thumpin' slap on Santa's Beard is JL on the Akai."[3]
  • In December 1988, Bar/None representative Jerry Rubino announced that Santa's Beard would be featured as the B-side to an Ana Ng 7" single[4], but the plan was seemingly scrapped and has not been mentioned elsewhere. Instead, Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon and Snowball In Hell appeared as the B-sides to Ana Ng singles in the UK and Australia, respectively.

Song Themes

Artificial Body Parts, Colors, Friendship, Funny But Sad, Hair, Holidays, Love Gone Sour, Music, Questions, Screaming

Videos

Current Rating

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Santa's Beard is currently ranked #738 out of 1022. (142 wikians have given it an average rating of 7.70)