The Mesopotamians
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | The Mesopotamians |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | The Else, Podcast 28B, They Might Be Highlights From The Else, Them Ain't Big Eye Ants, Idlewild, 50,000,000 They Might Be Giants Songs Can't Be Wrong |
| year | 2007 |
| first played | May 3, 2007 (480 known performances) |
| run time | 2:57 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh are all famous Mesopotamians. A Mohenjo-daren is someone from Mohenjo-daro, a city belonging to an ancient civilization in modern-day Pakistan that was contemporaneous with Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
- This song originally existed as a demo produced with the intention of release alongside a picture book for children, much like Bed, Bed, Bed and Kids Go!. However, the project never came together, so Linnell modified the lyrics and the song was recorded instead for The Else.
- Much like "The Mesopotamians", TMBG toured during the Lincoln and Flood era in two white Ford Econoline vans, dubbed "Milli" and "Vanilli" by TMBG.
- Sargon plays guitar left-handed, just like Flansy.
- The bridge lyrics "I thought that you were dead, I thought you crashed your car / No, man, I've been right here this whole time playing bass guitar" may refer to the rumor that Paul McCartney, bass guitarist of The Beatles, had died in a car accident in 1966 and was secretly replaced in the Beatles by a look-alike.
- A t-shirt featuring the four characters from this song was added to the TMBG Merchandise Store on July 10, 2007, to coincide with The Else's CD release.
- A short animated teaser for the Mesopotamians video featuring the characters from the t-shirt, entitled "Mesopotamians Now", was posted on YouTube and theymightbegiants.com on July 30, 2007. The clip uses dialog sampled from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. A follow-up video entitled "After the Audition" was posted to theymightbegiants.com on August 24, which sampled dialog from The Monkees TV series episode "Find The Monkees (The Audition)", which first aired in 1967. The music video, directed by David Cowles and animated by Chris Timmons, was released on October 2 on stereogum.com.
- In an interview with Spin, contrasting it with songs like I'm Impressed and The Shadow Government which were written at least partially as a response to the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War, John Linnell said, "Weirdly, 'The Mesopotamians,' which is a happy song, is specifically about Iraq but in a completely background, working around way. It was very of the time."
- In a 2013 interview, Linnell admitted to the song's resemblance to the Philip Roth novel The Great American Novel, "which is about a mythical baseball league with players named things like Gil Gamesh."
- They Might Be Giants performed this song on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2009, one week before the show's final episode. This was the last of over a dozen TMBG appearances on the show, before Conan's move to Los Angeles to host shows based there.
Song Themes
Accidents, Death, Food, Hair, History, Music, Not In 4-4 Time, People (Real), Swear Words, This Town, Trade Names, Transportation
Videos
- Watch it on
- The Mesopotamians official music video - Watch it on - Live performance on Late Night with Craig Ferguson.
- Watch it on - TMBGs last East coast performance on Conan O'Brien
- Watch it on - The Mesopotamians teaser: "Mesopotamians Now"
- Watch it on - The Mesopotamians teaser: "After the Audition"
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. The Mesopotamians is currently ranked #143 out of 910. (191 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.81) |
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