Lord Snowdon

From This Might Be A Wiki

song name Lord Snowdon
artist They Might Be Giants
releases BOOK
year 2021
run time 2:25
sung by John Flansburgh


Trivia/Info

  • An August 2021 press release for BOOK described the song:[1]
The Hammond organ drives "Lord Snowden," [sic] which drew lyrical inspiration from Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown. The princess and her husband, photographer Lord Snowden [sic], "were quite louche, and I found their relationship fascinating," Flansburgh explains. "He was a permanent outsider, always looking at her world from the remove of an artist and a commoner. For a songwriter, feeling that kind of distance is pretty relatable."
  • Flansburgh described the production process of recording the song in a March 2022 Tumblr post:
I put together the song during the deepest days of lockdown, and a fair bit of the track was done long distance, so it was one of the later songs for the album. John did the keyboard part in midi and those sounds held over when we tracked the band, which was useful guide as the breaks are a bit unusual. He redid the piano though (it always sounds better, at least to me old-fashioned ears). The bridge was something that I finished on the other side of tracking - there were some temp chords in there and Marty just marked it with his part, but I moved things some of it around and it worked fine. Usually that kind of thing is mistake, at least for me - painting myself into a corner, but with this one I think it came out well, and all the extra sonics in the bridge I put together post-tracking, which is a great way to really know what you’re doing as you build a track up.
  • On physical editions of BOOK, "Lord Snowdon" is misspelled as "Lord Snowden."[2] Flansburgh noted that the influence of whistleblower Edward Snowden looms large and may have led to the error.[3]
  • In December 2020 the band posted a short video to Instagram that showed Stan Harrison recording flutes for the song's bridge. The snippet includes some unused additional flute parts.

Song Themes

Museums, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, People (Real), Sleep, Temperature, Time

Videos

Current Rating

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Lord Snowdon is currently ranked #583 out of 1008. (42 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.04)