Mammal
From This Might Be A Wiki
Sculpture, from the Apollo 18 promo representing the song
| song name | Mammal |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Apollo 18, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, Flood + Apollo 18 |
| year | 1992 |
| first played | February 1, 1992 (230 known performances) |
| run time | 2:14 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- John Linnell explained the process of writing this song in an interview featured in the October 1992 issue of VOX Magazine:
It kind of seemed like the typical way to write a song like "Mammal" is to use 'mammal' in sort of a metaphor way; as sort of an oddball that isn't connected to the rest of the lyric necessarily or is the name, there can be a lot of different ways to do that. But I was thinking, "that seemed like a lot of work," and maybe the easiest thing was to go to the encyclopedia and read the article about mammals and try and write a straight-forward song and it's kind of more challenging in a way.
- In a 2013 interview with Wired discussing various They Might Be Giants songs related to science, Linnell would add:
["Mammal"] alludes to this idea that all mammals have hair at some stage in their development, whether it be whales, when they're embryos, or humans, before they're bald. And it's all very elliptical in the way that it's written. It's not a science song in the way of actually being information. It was a little more poetic than that.
- John Flansburgh on performing the song live in a 1992 interview with Discorder:" We do a song called "Mammal" off [Apollo 18] as a duo and that works really well because it's a pretty quiet song. It just works better as a duo, so that's the way we do it. We weren't a folk act when we started, we just do whatever material works best with whatever situation or set-up."
- "The monkey with no tail" may refer to the Barbary macaque, whose appearance is distinguished by a vestigial tail. In a broader sense, the lyric may also refer to apes or humans, who are notably distinguished from closely related monkeys by the lack of a tail.
Song Themes
Animals, Colors, Death, Drinks, Educational, Food, Hair, Lists, Relatives, Science, Size, Temperature
Videos
- Watch it on
– Recorded live on November 29, 2008 by CapitalQ
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