Death

They Might Be Death

A list of songs about or mentioning death and/or dying, TMBG's two favorite topics.

Central theme

• 120 Minutes Song - "Then we die"
• 2082 - "How can you still be living?" The subject impossibly doesn't ever die, until "you suffocate him with your pillow".
• By The Time You Get This - "...we'll no longer be alive"
• Chip The CHiP - Chip kills everyone he pulls over: also,"Lethal injection would be a welcome relief / From the CHiP"
• Crushed By Dust - "We are dead"
• Dead
• Dear Dead Congressman
• Didn't Kill Me
• Dig My Grave
• The End Of The Tour
• Exquisite Dead Guy
• For Science - "Flowers die and so will I", "You will be killed right away"
• Fun Assassin
• Graveyard
• I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die
• Jackie The Clipper
• Last Wave - "We die alone, we die afraid", "And the grave is the loneliest place"
• Lee Harvey Was A Friend Of Mine - "Lee Harvey got gunned down", "Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey"
• Lesson 16 - "I killed your father"
• Memphis - "I died and went to heaven"
• Mrs. Bluebeard - "Alas my murdered remains...", "Most people wouldn't hang the corpses up for review"
• No Answer - "...the Duke of Something's wife drowned"
• Older - The concept is that you are constantly getting closer to death
• Ondine - "I couldn't bear to kill you again"
• Our Cannibal Friends - "We invited our friends, our cannibal friends / And they'll think they're home when your consciousness ends"
• People Died Today
• Save Your Life
• Snapping Turtle - Snapping turtles killing ducks, Stryker killing snapping turtles
• Spider - "I promise not to kill you"
• Stone Cold Coup D'État - "The words assassinated the book"; "The kitchen cooked and ate the cook"; "The orchestra conductor has been captured and tried and killed"
• The Summer Breeze - "And killed a number of couples"
• Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead At 75
• Turn Around - murdered men, open graves, human skulls
• When Tornadoes Take Over The World - "Your friends will be swirling / Right above your disembodied head"
• When Will You Die
• Who's Gonna Guess The Dead Guy?
• You'll Miss Me - "You'll eulogize my big ol' body"
• Youth Culture Killed My Dog

Briefly mentioned

• 9 Secret Steps - "You will know when you're no longer alive"; "Inhume your gloom within a tomb"
• Answer - "Your dream was killed"
• Authenticity Trip - "Dead as a dog"
• Bangs (McSweeney's) -"Can you murder with your style..."
• Become A Robot - "Harbor a deathwish (help help)"
• Birdhouse In Your Soul - "After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts"
• The Bloodboat - "The Bloodboat flounders: Down they spin, forks and knives, precious lives..."
• Cabbagetown - "I talked to my old granddad as he fell into the sea"
• Caroline, No - "So sad to watch a sweet thing die"
• Certain People I Could Name - references murder continually
• Countdown Intro - "Scientists standing by to assure us that nothing is wrong have already been found murdered in their laboratories!", "Professor Psychofuckup, arrested and convicted of gate-crashing the show tonight, has hung himself by his watchband in his prison cell."
• Creepy - "Six million ways to die"
• Cupid - "I'd kill myself if I was somebody else"
• Dark And Metric - "Just because you're floating doesn't mean you haven't drowned"
• Darlin' Allison - "Sometime I will die / From this world I will fly"
• The Darlings Of Lumberland - "Mausoleums turn to sand"; "Hold my cold dead hand for a bit"
• Don't Break The Heart - "Don't make the fatal error"
• Don't Let's Start - "Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful" "I don't want to live in this world anymore "
• Dr. Sy Fly - "A buzzer sounds as he tries to take out Cavity Sam's wrenched ankle and he accidentally kills him"
• Erase - "When darlings must be murdered"
• The Everlasting Vibe - "If this night ends, we'll die"
• Flansy Stays In The Picture - "You wanna carve my tombstone, maybe you should kill me first."
• Four Of Two (Demo) - "At four of two I successfully expired"
• Haunted Floating Eye - "'Til I killed someone"
• Hide Away Folk Family - "And sadly the cross-eyed bear's been put to sleep behind the stairs"
• Hopeless Bleak Despair - "Until I died and went to hell"
• I Broke My Own Rule - "I'll lay me down, down in the dark, the dark and sad, sad empty room, room at the end, the end of the hallway, the hallway at the end, way at the end of time"
• I Palindrome I - "Someday mother will die and I'll get the money"
• I'll Sink Manhattan - presumably everyone in Manhattan would die in the process of it sinking
• I'm Sick (Of This American Life) - "And I've learned the value of human sacrifice"
• It Could Be Worse - "Gallows Hill and Andersonville"
• I've Got A Fang - "Her head exploded like a atom bomb"
• I've Got A Match - "I'm gonna die if you touch me one more time"
• James K. Polk - "But precious few have mourned the passing of Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president."
• The Lady And The Tiger - "I'm turning off life support, I'm putting an end to this joke", "Go right ahead and starve me dead"
• Lullabye To Nightmares - "When the elephants die"
• Mammal - "Dead uncle Allotheria"
• Meet James Ensor - "Dig him up and shake his hand"
• The Mesopotamians - "Hey man, I thought that you were dead"
• The Mexican Drill - "In a catacomb"
• Microphone - "His master's turned to sand"
• Mink Car - "When you're 24-karat dead"
• Montana - "And then haul off and die"
• One More Parade - "So willing to go and die upon a foreign shore"
• On The Drag - "'I won't die until I'm dead'"
• Pencil Rain - "...lives that are claimed ... perishing in the pencil rain"
• Philadelphia - "First we take art that is dead"
• Poison Flowers - "Who's going to build my death ray?"
• Purple Toupee - refers to the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X - also, the lyric "The purple brigade is marching from the grave"
• Road Movie To Berlin - "We were once so close to heaven / Peter came out and gave us medals / Declaring us the nicest of the damned"
• Scott Bower - "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle", "My lifeboat determines my deathboat", "My lightsaber determines my Death Star"
• She's An Angel - "Does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?"
• She Was A Hotel Detective - "Will she shoot you? She won't have to, you're already dead"
• Shoehorn With Teeth - "What's the sense in ever thinking 'bout the tomb"
• Sleeping In The Flowers - "You declare that I have drowned"
• Someone Keeps Moving My Chair - "Where your visiting friend accidentally was killed"
• The Statue Got Me High - "The statue made me die", "It killed me"
• Stalk Of Wheat - "And I'll have it 'til the day I die", "I was all out of luck like a duck that died"
• Stomp Box - "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill me now"
• Swing Is A Word - "Six feet down"
• Tavern In Pinsk - "It takes the sting off dying; alive or dead, it's all the same."
• Tesla - "He's dead on the floor", "The plan for the death-ray's design"
• This Land Is Your Land - "it's a dead-thing body"
• Tick Tick Tick Tick - "Buried under the house"
• Twisting - "Slowly twisting / In the wind"
• Upside Down Frown- "You say I'm going to die when you tell me"
• Wearing A Raincoat - references to the undead
• Why Did You Grow A Beard? - "Would it kill you?"
• Worried Sleep - "Bouncing some dead basketball"
• XTC vs. Adam Ant - "Only one will survive"

Honorable mention

• Circular Karate Chop - "short sharp shock" refers to a beheading in its original context (Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado)
• ECNALUBMA - Lines like "Injury, blood and grieving" imply death, though it is never actually mentioned
• Experimental Film - In the H*R video, Strong Sad dressed up as the Grim Reaper. Also the Tentacle Skull appears.
• I Like Fun - The music video features the narrator hallucinating after dying after waiting in line for prescription medicine.
• Join Us - The album cover and some of the associated artwork features a monster hearse. Additionally, one of the known working titles for the album was Necropolis.
• Let Your Hair Hang Down - The chord progression for a good duration of this song spells out the word "dead". Considering the track was composed by John Linnell, the concept was probably lingering in his subconscious during its creation.
• Spoiler Alert - Spoiler Alert: There's about to be a head on collision. It can be assumed that at least one of the two narrators will die.
• Subliminal - "As I got hit by a car there was a message for me. As I went through the windshield, I noticed something". Getting hit by a car and flying through the windshield would likely result in death.
• Why Must I Be Sad? - Among the Alice Cooper songs mentioned are "I Love the Dead" and "Dead Babies."

See also

• Skulls
• Zombies Or The Undead