Spider

From This Might Be A Wiki
Drawing from Apollo 18 promo representing the song

song name Spider
artist They Might Be Giants
releases Apollo 18, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity, TMBG Clock Radio, Flood + Apollo 18
year 1992
first played December 30, 1995 (292 known performances)
run time 0:50
sung by John Linnell, John Flansburgh says the "Must stop!" line


Trivia/Info

  • From the tmbg.com FAQ archive: "Spider is the product of an idle afternoon messing with the sampler. Linnell did the voices, except for "must...stop!" which Flans added along with the cocktail bongos, horns and sound effects."
  • John Flansburgh further explained the song's creation in a 2003 Kittenpants interview:[1]
Our big collaboration is on the arrangement and production. We're too shy to sit in the same room and bash out a song, although it has been done. [...] We've handed off songs in various forms of completion -- tracks or sometimes just fragments -- or a lyric -- or samples. Spider was some vocal samples Linnell put on a disc and I put the track together from that.
  • Flansburgh, in a 1995 interview:[2]
I'm not quite sure [what inspired the song], but it's sort of got a monster-movie vibe to it, like an overdubbed Japanese horror movie. Six months ago John was talking about — well, I have spiders in my house. [...] I'll get spider bites in my sleep. That might have been the genesis. I think I remember him reflecting on that.

Song Themes

Album Lead-Ins, Animals, Death, Love, Nonsense Words, Problems With Liner Notes, Spoken Word, Traded Tracks, Violence

Videos

Current Rating

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Spider is currently ranked #839 out of 1005. (129 wikians have given it an average rating of 7.33)