| song name | We Want a Rock |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| album | Flood |
| year | 1990 |
| first played | Feb. 1, 1992 (22 known performances) |
| run time | 2:47 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Interviewer: I've spent too much time thinking about We Want a Rock. Is it about political oppression? Or is it just about rocks, string and foreheads?
Linnell: 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.
Interviewer: Oh. See, I'd allowed myself to see the string people as blue-collar workers and the forehead people as intellectuals, and you guys as going after political forces that oppress the former and ridicule the latter.
Linnell: (Pause. Laughs.) Well, that's fine, too. I can't disagree with such a wonderful interpretation. But I'm afraid that's not what was in my head. 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.
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
Current Rating We Want A Rock is currently ranked #17 out of 797. (361 wikians have given it an average rating of 9.02)
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