Older
From This Might Be A Wiki
Illustration from the Long Tall Weekend liner notes
| song name | Older |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Long Tall Weekend, What We Did This Summer, Music From Malcolm In The Middle, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants, A User's Guide To They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity, Podcast 55, 50,000,000 They Might Be Giants Songs Can't Be Wrong |
| year | 1999 |
| first played | March 7, 1996 (869 known performances) |
| run time | 1:56 |
| sung by | John Linnell; John Flansburgh sings the bridge |
Trivia/Info
- This song debuted on eMusic's website in mid-April 1999, three months before the release of Long Tall Weekend.
- A video of this song was made for the ABC TV special Brave New World in 1999. The video was filmed at the "ClockTower Building" in Brooklyn. In 2009, the apartment in which the video was shot went on the market for an asking price of $25 million [1].
- Different from the horn-filled version that later appeared on Mink Car.
- Flansburgh is uncredited in this song according to the Long Tall Weekend liner notes.
- The AV Club included this song in their list "Losing our edge? 14 panicky works about growing older":
The TMBG track “Older,” from 1999’s Long Tall Weekend, masks any overt anxiety about aging and death behind a stentorian voice that sounds like Father Time making an uncompromising proclamation: “You’re older than you’ve ever been, and now you’re even older / and now you’re even older / and now you’re even older / …and now you’re older still.” There isn’t much more to the song, beyond that chant with variations (“This day will soon be at an end, and now it’s even sooner”) and a bridge that announces, “Time is marching on! And time… is still marching on!” But the starkness and simplicity of song makes the message even more unadorned and terrifying: We’re all constantly moving toward death and running out of time, and actually thinking about it is maddening… but not thinking about it doesn’t slow down the process one whit.
- In live performances, Linnell usually sings the entire song, and the pause between "And time..." and "...is still marching on" is often greatly extended. Additionally, some live performances have also done the following:
- Confetti is occasionally fired out into the audience during the long pause.
- In some shows in the mid- and late-2010s, the pause is extended after the "And time..." line, by a simulated phone call act similar to Phone Calls From The Dead.
Song Themes
Age, Funny But Sad, Not In Major Or Minor, Onomatopoeia, Time
Videos
- Watch the
video on tmbg.com (Live) - Watch it on
- Brave New World clip - The Puppet Johns perform the song to acoustic guitar on an episode of They Might Be Giants Friday Night Family Podcast
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. Older is currently ranked #143 out of 1022. (122 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.84) |
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![[1]](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/09/realestate/09deal_600.jpg){kind=link}