I'll Sink Manhattan
From This Might Be A Wiki
song name | I'll Sink Manhattan |
artist | They Might Be Giants |
releases | They'll Need A Crane (EP), Don't Let's Start (Album), Miscellaneous T, Then: The Earlier Years, Podcast 46 |
year | 1988 |
first played | June 17, 1988 (33 known performances) |
run time | 2:32 |
sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- "This song is about falling in love, and then falling out of love with that person, and then killing everyone in Manhattan." -Flansburgh at a concert on November 11, 1989
- "A song about a guy who somehow figures out how to sink the island of Manhattan just to kill his ex-lover, so it's his apology to the other people he's gonna kill in between. He's just gotta do it!" -Linnell in NME Magazine, March 11, 1989
- The title of this song came from lamppost graffiti that Flansburgh noticed and found intriguing, though he discovered after the song's release that the graffiti was for Philadelphia-based industrial-noise band Sink Manhattan, and that they were "pissed" about the song (according to show banter on February 21, 1997).
- The unusual vocal sample in the introduction of the song is a message left on Dial-A-Song (back when it was taking messages) by a member of the New York Police Department, played backwards. When played normally, it says: "Thanks a lot guys. From the NYPD. We love you." In the Spring '94 Info Club booklet, Flansburgh said, "since the song had a New York theme, it seemed relevant". The unreversed sample is archived here.
Song Themes
Backwards, Bad English, Cities, Criminal Activities, Death, Fire, Forgetting, Remembering, Friendship, I've Got A, Love Gone Sour, New York City, No, Not In 4-4 Time, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, Plans, Rhymes, Sea, Size, Songs With Samples, Telecommunication
Videos
- Live on 120 Minutes in 1988
- Watch it on
- official static video
Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. I'll Sink Manhattan is currently ranked #445 out of 910. (77 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.23) |
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