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Why Does The Sun Shine?

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Music video for Why Does The Sun Shine?
Screenshot from the Nickelodeon KaBlam! video for the live version
song nameWhy Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)
artistThey Might Be Giants
albumWhy Does The Sun Shine? (EP), Music From Malcolm In The Middle (Leaked Soundtrack), Carmen Sandiego - Out Of This World, TMBG Clock Radio, A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity
year1993
first playedMar. 4, 1987 (546 known performances)
run time2:53
sung byJohn Flansburgh; spoken parts done by John Linnell (often reversed when played live)

Trivia/Info

  • This is a remake of the song by Hy Zaret And Lou Singer, performed by folk singer Tom Glazer on the album Space Songs (Motivation Records, 1959). MP3s of the song and others from that album and 5 others can be found here.
  • The origin of the chorus and of the facts in the song come from a book titled "Stars: A Guide to the Constellations, Sun, Moon, Planets and Other Features of the Heavens" written by professors Herbert Zim and Robert Baker, copyright 1951 by Simon and Schuster.
  • The song states that the sun is so hot that everything in it is a gas; however, this is incorrect. The sun is SO hot that all gases are ionized and turned into plasma, which is a very highly-charged state of gas considered a state of matter separate from gas. To address this misinformation, TMBG wrote the song "Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma)" for the album Here Comes Science.
  • TMBG have been performing their version since at least 1985, with a performance from this year appearing on the television show Nick Rocks.
  • This mellow studio recording of "Why Does The Sun Shine?" isn't responsible for the song's recent surge in popularity; the rocking live version featured on Severe Tire Damage in 1998 is. TMBG hardly ever performs the slow-paced version of the song.
  • 93 million miles is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Read more info here.
  • The nuclear reactions between Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Helium may be found here.
  • This song was heard in the Malcolm In The Middle episode, "Malcolm Babysits".
  • In iTunes, the words "Live Version" appear after the song's title, despite the fact that it is a studio recording.
  • In The Simpsons Game, while in the planetarium exhibit in a museum, a voiceover quotes the lyrics to the song, saying, "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas. A giant [sic] nuclear furnace."

Song Themes

Educational, Precious Metal, Questions, Science, Size, Space, Title Not In Lyrics, TMBG Remakes

Videos

  • Watch it on  - Animated music video for the rocking version of this song, from the Nickelodeon TV show, KaBlam! (circa 1999)
 
Current Rating

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Why Does The Sun Shine? is currently ranked #45 out of 825. (268 wikians have given it an average rating of 9.03)
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