Interpretations:When Will You Die

Linnell gets mean

In countless interviews Linnell is at pains to explain how detached he is from the subject matter in his songs, arguing that his life is uninteresting for popular consumption. Extracting the self from finished pieces of art is impossible, and although often disguised by methaphor keen Giants fans have a firm sense of what Linnell is like as a person from his songs. It is rather ususual to find him so mean.

When will you die shows Linnell at his most malicious although he is careful to cover his tracks on the identity of the person he so hates. Given that the demise of his hated figure will be celebrated by a nation of school children they must be quite high profile. In a recent interview (which I can't be bothered to find the reference for) Linnell said that the band were a bit uneasy as he sang the lyrics trying to guess the identity, perhaps that's why he (unwisely) starts name checking the band and discussing high fives ect. This deflates the menance somewhat and perhaps shows the influence of writing too many songs for kids. It is still a mean spirited song, the narrator sounding childish in his list of complaints, which echoes Can't Keep Johnny Down. One suspects the hated figure is political(perhaps an emotional sequel to I'm Impressed) and for this listener the line "When will you die", may well be borrowed from the song "Margaret on the Guillotine" on Morrissey's Viva Hate 23 years ago. The songs, I should add, sound totally different!(Mr Tuck)

General "I Hate You" Song

Quoth John Linnell;

"When we were working on it, everybody was looking at me, like, “Who is this about?” [Laughs.] And no, it was kind of hilarious to keep people… It’s a funny thing to lead people to believe that there is somebody that it’s about, because in a way, the energy of the song is derived from that. I would joke and say, “Well, it’s about someone in this room, but I’m not going to say who.”

Mr. Linnell says right in the quote that he found it funny to lead a person to believe the song was actually about someone, which of course means that there is not actually a someone that it's about. This song is simply a generalized 'I Hate You' song. In my opinion, sometimes it's nice to sing an angry song about nobody so you can fill in the blanks and project whoever you're mad at onto it.

This is just such a song.

The insults are inordinately mean, with such gems as "We will know at last how great it is to be alive" and the part about buying tickets to jump on the subject's grave. Scathing to say the least; vindicating to someone listening to the song with hate in their heart.

As for the self-reference, it ties the song firmly into 'reality' (or at least the illusion or such) by reminding us that They Might Be Giants is a real band of real people who have a real hate for this poor sap they're singing about. It also reminds us that this really is just a song meant to be funny and over the top with a dose of tongue-in-cheek humor.

How is "you" not me?

Sorry, I automatically assumed the "you" in "When Will You Die" was me. And I loved it. It reminded me a little of "O Do Not Forsake Me." It doesn't sound all that malicious to me. It made me laugh. Am I sick?

oooooh i know i know!!

This song is about the crying girl and linnell wants her to kick the bucket because she wont stop crying

Vive Le Revolucion!

In my opinion, it seems as though he's writing about the collapse of a government. The banks will all close? Maybe they've been burnt down, as some oppressive regime is crushed. Schoolkids, i.e. students are often the first to rebel. It makes sense to me.

Lol No

Banks close on federal holidays. The painfully obvious intention is that the death will be so memorable they will declare it a national holiday. Suggesting it's supposed to be anarchist is ludicrous.

Prisoner on death row

From the first time I heard the song, I thought it was about someone on death row who has committed a particularly heinous crime. Linnell knows every detail of the death such as the how and why except for the timing as capital punishment is such a drawn out process - Ash

Narrator as Killer?

I get the impression from this song that the narrator is planning to murder the subject of this song. The main thing that gives me this idea is that he says "I know HOW." Why would he know how this person is going to die unless he was planning on doing it himself? Thus the main point of the song is to psyche himself up to commit this crime against his fellow man.

The narrator hates this person so much for his so-called heinous crimes. This is unsubstantiated in the lyrics, but given that the narrator is insane enough to want to murder someone, I like to think that he may just be so annoyed with all the things that the soon-to-be victim is doing (or not doing) that it has driven him to kill this person, similarly (a little bit at least) "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Worse yet, the insane narrator then believes that everyone will congratulate him for his deed, joining him in dancing on this dead man's grave. The "insane, bad, sociopath who wrecks everything he touches" is who again? -WhatIsThatThing 21:42, 6 August 2011 (EDT)

Re: "I know how" the narrator doesn't mean it like that, or else he couldn't say a few lines down how everyone would rejoice if "we" knew the hour of his death. He doesn't know it more than anyone else. user:PaintSplatter 00:15, 27 August 2011 (EDT)

I like to think

it's a song about bin Laden.

And I about McKinley. ~ magbatz

It's clearly about my mother in-law

Impossible to interpret

Like a lot of songs on this album, the lyrics are lazy, and this song is impossible to make sense out of. We don't know anything about the sociopath except that he is a sociopath. An oddity about the song, however, is that the band members are named, as if it really is about a specific person.

Chorus of "yeah" has clues?

TMBG uses a chorus of "no" in a lot of songs, but this one has a chorus of "yeah." Could be informative to compare the meanings of those songs.

From Twitter...

@tmbg Just who is the song "When Will You Die" about? #dontsayme

1 Nov

in reply to ↑

@tmbgThey Might Be Giants

@tkking Hate.

It's funny because...

... the real sociopath in this song is the narrator. No matter what happened, this level of hatred is almost certainly disproportionate to anything the person concerned could have done. --- Whirrrlwind (Woosh!) 18:02, 8 February 2012 (EST)

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