Toddler Hiway

From This Might Be A Wiki

song name Toddler Hiway
artist They Might Be Giants
releases 1985 Demo Tape (as "Toddler Hi-Way"), They Might Be Giants, Then: The Earlier Years
year 1985
first played October 4, 1987 (22 known performances)
run time 0:25
sung by John Flansburgh


Trivia/Info

  • This is one of the songs from They Might Be Giants that was taken directly from the 1985 Demo Tape. "We repeatedly failed to improve upon [it] using fancier equipment." - John & John
  • A Close 'n' Play is an old toy record player that only works when the lid is closed.
  • "A Massachusetts-based Toys-Я-Us apparently existed at one time wherein the manager of the store would fill the parking lot with new toys for the kids to test out and play with before the store opened each morning. This particular toy store is the basis for 'Toddler Hiway'." - The Early Years Handbook
  • At some concerts, The Avatars Of They have performed an extended version of this song, with extra lyrics and in a style described as "open, bombastic, and a bit tortured".
  • John Flansburgh has mentioned that this song was initially based on an imitation of Bruce Springsteen. "The Springsteen got lost in the recording, but that's where it started."[1] The extended version that the Avatars of They performed live is loosely in the style of Bruce Springsteen.
  • Toddler Hiway was the very first song played on Dial-A-Song, according to John Linnell in a 1998 interview on This American Life. Linnell:
John [Flansburgh] said "I've set [Dial-A-Song] up." I was living in a different part of Brooklyn, so I phoned him up, and it was Toddler Hiway. And he recorded it really quietly, because we had this problem with the phone machine where a loud sound, with this particular model, would actually tell the machine that that was the end of the message.

Song Themes

A Capella, Children, Numbers, Time, Trade Names, Transportation

Videos

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Toddler Hiway is currently ranked #945 out of 1005. (126 wikians have given it an average rating of 6.70)