Birdhouse In Your Soul (Demo)
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Birdhouse in Your Soul |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Unreleased, Dial-A-Song, Power Of Dial-A-Song |
| year | 1988 |
| run time | 1:59 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- This early demo of "Birdhouse In Your Soul" is shorter than the final song (lacking the intro, bridge and repeats of the chorus) and features alternate lyrics. It has not been released outside of Dial-A-Song, and is currently only available as a low quality over-the-phone recording.
- Although this demo is known to have aired on Dial-A-Song as early as January 1989 − when it was partially played through Dial-A-Song in a band interview on NPR's Fresh Air − , it is unknown when the demo was first created and added to the service:
- John Linnell wrote the song's melody and chords at some point between 1984 and 1987, when he was living in Manhattan. He mentioned in a 2021 interview that he wrote the lyrics to the song in a "stream of consciousness" within his apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, roughly dating the song's demo to 1988. Linnell recalled in another 2021 interview: "I was living in Hell's Kitchen in the early '80s and I'm pretty sure that's when I started coming up with the harmonic melodic bits, because I was doing a lot of that at that time. Then, you know, five years later, we were making our third album and I'd kind of come up with the lyric."
- John Flansburgh also mentioned this demo in a 2021 interview with The Guardian, with a potential year of release: "Before we got noticed we did this thing called Dial-A-Song to get our music heard. You basically rang a phone number and heard a song free of charge. A really embryonic version of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" was on Dial-A-Song as a one-minute demo a good year before we signed to Elektra."
- Despite mentions of the song's demo roughly dating it to 1988, "Birdhouse In Your Soul" was around as early as 1987. Its earliest confirmed appearance was on a song list from that year, which also contained several other songs that would be recorded for Lincoln. Gary Ray has also claimed that one of the band's first performances of the song was at Darinka[1], which closed on May 3, 1987 after the band had performed two sets the night before[2].
- This is the first of two demos that the band made of this song. The second demo, which has not been released, was created in 1989 and featured a different musical arrangement.[3] John Linnell spoke about two demos in a 2021 interview:
I almost ruined the song, because I wanted it to sound more normal. When we started working with Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, I played them a new demo that I'd made where I'd completely changed the rhythm section to make it more like a standard pop song. In the finished version, the version that was released, there's a crazy drumbeat where the snare is hitting on every beat, and then the kick is coming in on the off beats, which is completely wrong and crazy, but that was the original version. I played that to these guys and they said, 'Okay that's what we're gonna use that as a spotlight track.' Then I made this new demo and I completely changed the drumbeat and they were like, 'You ruined it. Why did you do that?' So we went back to the original drumbeat. [...] They were definitely excited about that one and then I obviously was kind of nervous and got cold feet and tried to make it sound more normal, and luckily they were there to save me from myself.
- The lines "I don't feel thirty" and "Give me something to write on!" are likely references to the Van Halen song "Hot for Teacher" and its lines "I don't feel tardy" and "Gimme something to write on, man." The band has been known to break into "Hot for Teacher" during performances of "Masshole" as well.
- "Cover the Earth" has been the catchphrase of paint company Sherwin-Williams since 1910, when it was added to their logo which depicts a paint bucket pouring out onto a globe.[4]
Song Themes
Age, Animals, Clothes, Colors, Death, Food, Loneliness, Money, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, References To Other Songs Or Musicians, Size, Sleep, Time, Transportation, Writing
Videos
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