Yeh Yeh

From This Might Be A Wiki

song name Yeh Yeh
artist They Might Be Giants
releases TMBG Unlimited - June, Mink Car, Man, It's So Loud In Here (Promo EP)
year 2001
first played September 10, 2001 (66 known performances)
run time 2:40
sung by John Flansburgh


Trivia/Info

It was recorded by Georgie Fame, but apparently it's — we're not actually completely clear on this, but it appears that it was an instrumental before it was this Georgie Fame song, that John Hendricks, of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, made up words to... which is something that that vocal group used to do; they would take a popular instrumental — or an unpopular instrumental — and make up crazy words to it, and I think this belongs in that category. It's definitely the case with the song 'Twisted' that Joni Mitchell covered — popularly known as 'my analyst told me'; some of you may remember. And [this] may well be the case; it sounds as if Yeh Yeh was written the same way, but sadly we're uninformed about this particular song.

It was kind of a big collage. It was done having the drummer play different grooves with different sized drums, different snares, and then chopping it up into pieces. It's very cut and paste. There's wild little moments - drums fills that come from nowhere, piano glisses and things. It's sort of patchwork. It was all done in Pro Tools.

  • In 2018, John Flansburgh commented on the influence of French Yé-yé music on his song "This Microphone", and mentioned that the song title "Yeh Yeh" was probably derived from this style of music.[2]
  • Featured in the Chrysler commercial "Parking Lot". (Watch it on Youtube.png )
  • Featured in the tourist office commercial of the Dutch province Zeeland "Land in Zee!" (Watch it on Youtube.png )
  • Music written by Rodgers Grant and Pat Patrick in 1963 and first recorded by Mongo Santamaría on his 1963 album Watermelon Man (Watch it on Youtube.png ).
  • Lyrics written shortly thereafter by Jon Hendricks, recorded by Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan at the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival (Watch it on Youtube.png — video mis-labeled as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, with picture showing Ross instead of Bavan).
  • Hendricks' version was taken to the top of the U.K. charts in January 1965 by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames (Watch it on Youtube.png ).
  • Other versions include Lasse Mårtenson's 1965 version in Finnish (Watch it on Youtube.png ), Karina's 1965 version, and Matt Bianco's 1985 version (Watch it on Youtube.png ).

Song Themes

Everything, Fire, Food, Love, Movies, Music, Problems With Liner Notes, Questions, Real Estate, Songs Used In Commercials, Telecommunication, Temperature, TMBG Remakes, Yes

Videos

Current Rating

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Yeh Yeh is currently ranked #554 out of 1005. (92 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.11)