Talk:Become A Robot

18-mar-2003

Regarding the lyrics, I always thought it was "harbor a penguin"! Oh no! I'd better give it a closer listen. :) --SR

"These lines are disputable. The liner notes to Then: The Earlier Years claim that the lines in the first bridge are as written here, and that in the second verse the line is "harbor a wishnik." Many fans claim to hear "harbor a deathwish" or "harbor a penguin," but "deathwish" seems the most likely. Others hear "number A/'cause we're gray" in the first bridge rather than what is printed here." -- http://www.tmbg.org/band-info/songs/lyrics/BecomeaRobot.html

I remember hearing somewhere that the Johns printed "harbor a wishnik" in the liner notes of something because they didn't want their parents worrying about the "deathwish" lyric. The weird thing about that is that I don't know of the '85 demo tape having lyrics in the liner notes of any edition, so I don't think the lyrics were printed until 1997. Certainly their parents would have stopped reading their liner notes by then, yes? Maybe not. I wouldn't know. -- Jolene

I always thought it said 'Penguin'. 'Deathwish' certainly makes much more sense... but it still sounds like 'Penguin' to me. --Thaddius 13:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thought 'Dentist'? xD --༺𝄞𝄆Ⓠⓤⓔⓛ⎈Ⓓⓞⓜⓜⓐⓖⓔ𝄇༻ 11:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC) (I've just recently found out that my version of this song was the live version, not the demo, and I wholeheartedly agree John sounds much more like he's concerned about harbouring penguins)

11-jun-2004

Although this song seems pretty silly, I really think it is about losing your job to technology. The "whoops, too late!" could refer to how fast technology changes. The "deathwish" verse could refer to the state of depression that you might fall into after losing your job to a robot. --N8dawg

I don't see the mathematics part of the song.

"Number Eight", maybe. That's more numbers than Math, but we don't have a Numbers category. -Ecks

Now we do. -- Buzzmusic100 ("Keep your voice down...")

Am I the only one who thinks it's somewhat ridiculous to censor "deathwish" in the liner notes when there's (IMO) far worse in other TMBG songs? ("Someday mother will die and I'll get the money", "You son of a bitch", etc.) --Fuzy2K 01:49, 7 August 2012 (EDT)

Aren't the correct lyrics "Let's stick together cause we're number A, let's stick to numbers cause we're grey"? I think these should be fixed in the Lyrics page.