The Statue Got Me High
From This Might Be A Wiki
Drawing, from the Apollo 18 promo, representing the song.
| song name | The Statue Got Me High |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Apollo 18, The Statue Got Me High (EP), Direct From Brooklyn, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, A User's Guide To They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity, Flood + Apollo 18, 50,000,000 They Might Be Giants Songs Can't Be Wrong |
| year | 1992 |
| first played | January 23, 1992 (190 known performances) |
| run time | 3:06 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- John Linnell, from In Their Own Words: Songwriters Talk About the Creative Process By Bill DeMain:
It's kind of a song about having an epiphany or something. The song actually started with completely different lyrics. That's what I was saying about dummy lyrics. I think the song was called 'The Apple of My Eye'. When I came up with the line 'the statue got me high', it amused me. It was taking two things and putting them together - not a non sequitur but something sort of interesting and odd about the juxtaposition of those two things. Part of it is that it's the idea that the statue would be in a public square, a monument. Not necessarily a work of art, but something that's just utterly immobile and represents something that's in the past - just the idea of that blowing somebody's mind. It seems like one of the least likely things to make the top of your head come off, and that's what happens in the song.
- John Linnell described the lyrics in a 1993 radio interview on KROQ:
There's a guy who has this encounter with a statue of some kind, and it makes his head explode. So that's really all there is to the lyrics of the song. The song is not about hard drugs, and it's not taking an advocacy position either. It's just describing this particular experience which no one has ever had.
- John Linnell said at a 1994 show, "This song is based on, uh, the life of Don Giovanni, which I didn't know when I wrote the song." Don Giovanni is an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte that does in fact share a number of similarities with the song's lyrics.
- Video directed by Adam Bernstein. Shot at Los Angeles' Sepulveda Dam, a possible homage to numerous sci-fi movies that have as well.
- There are three versions of this video. Two depict Linnell engulfed in flames (with both versions having the fire edited in using different effects). The other, presumably for air on British television, does not show the fire, but instead, footage of a heart monitor. Flansburgh states on the Direct From Brooklyn DVD commentary that fire (along with ninjas) was not permitted on British TV.
- At points in the music video, Flans and Linnell wear black T-shirts that say "Apollo 18" on them. During the "space" shots where Earth is represented by a floating globe, constellations of Flans's guitar and Linnell's accordion can be seen in the background.
- In 2023, Flansburgh described this video as "a wild, big big production, although a little nerve-racking. Standing on those platforms was fully vertigo inducing."[1]
Song Themes
Addiction, Compulsion, Body Parts, Clothes, Death, Fire, Lies And Deception, Mind Control, Hypnotism, Problems With Liner Notes, Screaming, The Senses
Videos
- Watch it on
- Watch it on
- 2019 "best quality" video - Clip showing the UK edited scene
Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. The Statue Got Me High is currently ranked #16 out of 1020. (289 wikians have given it an average rating of 9.21) |
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