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We Want A Rock

From This Might Be A Wiki
song nameWe Want a Rock
artistThey Might Be Giants
releasesFlood
year1990
first playedFeb. 1, 1992 (46 known performances)
run time2:47
sung byJohn Linnell

Trivia/Info

  • Linnell: "I guess the song is a metaphor. We who have nothing to 'wind string around' are lost in the wilderness. But those who deny this need are 'burning our playhouse down.' If you put quotes around certain words it sounds more like a metaphor." - 2009 RollingStone Interview
  • John Linnell said of the song in a 2008 Houston Chronicle interview, "Uh, there's a little bit of stream of consciousness to writing that one. This sounds really abstract, but in order to begin wrapping a piece of string around itself, you need something to start with. Like a rock. I guess you can make a ball of string starting from nothing if you just make a tiny loop at the end of the string. But it seems theoretically impossible. It's a metaphor for getting started." He continued, "It was just a general set of loose metaphors. You know, where do you begin? It's a funny conceit, saying everyone has this problem when it's really about the problem of the person singing about wanting a prosthetic forehead. It's hard to make the argument that everybody wants one. You're enlisting everyone else."
  • Played over the closing credits of Jake Johannsen: This'll Take About an Hour. It was also used during the closing credits of Wild Chicago, a show on Chicago's PBS station WTTW.

Song Themes

Artificial Body Parts, Body Parts, Doors, Fire, Forgetting, Remembering, Heads, Kingdom Of Loathing Reference, Medical, Money, Music, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, Questions, Size, Title Not In Lyrics, TV And Movie Themes, Violence

Videos

 
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We Want A Rock is currently ranked #9 out of 845. (435 wikians have given it an average rating of 9.07)
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