New Wave Will Never Die
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | New Wave Will Never Die |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | The World Is To Dig |
| year | 2026 |
| run time | 2:36 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- The song's title refers to the staying power of the new wave genre which rose to commercial popularity in the late '70s and early '80s. John Flansburgh had previously spoken the title phrase during a 1993 interview on Late Night with Conan O'Brien: "We started in the early '80s during the new wave explosion. New wave will never die."
- John Linnell spoke about the song in a 2026 interview with The Spill Magazine:
This is a Flansburgh song, so I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think we kind of have a love-hate relationship with new wave. There is something appealing about it in that we have a kind of nostalgia for that period, and yet at the time new wave was considered, I think, this sort of watered-down version of punk music – it was at the time a little bit ridiculous… Now, like anything else from that long ago, you kind of develop an affection for the goofiness of it. If I may speak for Flansburgh again, I think there is a character singing this song who is like this dedicated adherent. There was a song called "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay", and it's a similar attitude. Someone who is obsessively insisting what was then an ephemeral thing is this permanent, important cultural thing, and saying it will never die is pointing out that obvious thing of like, "Yes, of course it will die."
- Flansburgh on the backing vocalization heard in the song's chorus[1]:
It's a synthesizer plugin by Isotope — the VocalSynth, played by John L. It is based around a vocoder sound, so it has a vowel-like attack. That's what makes it seem human. We actually tried to use the vocoder on the MicroKorg but it didn't really sound mysterious enough, but the Isotope thing did the trick.
- The lyric "So get thee down to a coffee shop" may be a reference to the famous line from Hamlet, "Get thee to a nunnery, go." that Hamlet says to Ophelia.
Song Themes
Coffee, Death, Dreams, Drinks, Drugs, Food, Heads, History (Theme), Music, Occupations, Questions, Real Estate, Religion, Supernatural, Sleep (Theme), Sports, Transportation, Writing
Videos
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