What song are you listening to right now? What does it mean to you?
Last Updated: 02.07.2025 12:01
This is They Might Be Giants, and contrary to the dull, glistening and listless imaginations of self-perverted twerps who think songs have “real” or “secret” meanings that only the author or authors could tell you, John L. & John F. of They Might Be Giants will lay it all right out on the line for you every time I’ve ever seen ’em get into it.
Hold!
Feel!
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Is that what you think of me?
Look.
What the singer or writer, the true creator, the artist (modern, classic, wise or otherwise) thinks it should mean in addition to what they’ve indeed made is…puff. Fluff. Tacky add-on, at best.
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I like to enjoy music, literally. Just the text, just what it says.
A great deal like Robert Frost. “No musician!” would you say? HA. HA! HA! HA! Nonsense!
“The Word’s Address”
Would be wildly, reasonably sane to call “BULL’S-HIT!” on such fancy-shmancy anti-bullseye potshots.
I’m far worse than serious on such scores: I’m sincere.
A sad pun that reflects a sadder mess
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Why even read my take on what it means? You think my “hot insider intel” can override, overrule or otherwise upset the work itself: in all it truly IS? Can interpretation unseat the text?
It is yours. Your own. Don’t be too precious about it, please. Shoot me a comment below: tell me what’s moving in you, easily or uneasily as you listen for yourself to the song (below!), and judge it for all that it is, or isn’t. For what they have done, or for what they have failed to do: in you.
That doesn’t mean the trivialist has some secret special key and code in their possession. They’re just kinky like that: like to be deep in the loopy sh!t. Smells like some way too-old pretend teen’s spirit hit the fan again, though. VULGAR.
How can I get thousands of likes on TikTok?
I'll repeat it for those who may not have already guessed:
I’m plain-out roaring, here!
Couldn't sleep last night
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Art is what moves you in ways mere craft could not.
It is what the thing itself meant in you. Or: means to you, coming forward now.
A finished work. A “fait accompli.”
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Or do not. Yoda won’t take them odds, and you shouldn’t aspire to be some critic’s forceless green-tinged puppet, whether cartoon or foam rubber: IT STANK EVERYWHERE BUT THE BOX OFFICE, and buddy?
THE WORLD'S ADDRESS
Don’t believe the hype.
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I say leave that to the one being called, Holmes. Or…sure, lock your tongue away behind your lips and bite yourself, hard! Why offend needlessly over what amounts to a nickname? Must you?
Not I.
Whatsoever is moved in you: now THAT you can know!
There is no “code” in art to break.
A whole lot like AC/DC, Sia Furler and The Black Keys! Great pool hall music, the lot of them!
Just leaves me depressed
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You say. You’re the one to be moved, after all. In the “final anal”—what some call the “final” analysis. Why be rude? Art may be! Art may be the rudest thing in the world, taken out of its own natural time, place and culture! Pay heed! Open your eyes and let your tongue waggle like a slug!
A. See below. It’s a 2-Parter!
Who do you say I am? Some “grammar anarch & semantic champion” for the people!
This isn’t a matter for seriousness.
Check between one or the other set of your cheeks, and go blow.
AND LET THEM HEAR THIS SONNNG
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It is background intel, no part of the work at all, at all.
The thing itself is the thing itself.
The original authors did.
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I can see your secrets
Life's parade of fashion
Did it stink for you, or were you moved to applaud? Don’t be shy.
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WERE WRONG, the world's address! A place that's
This all holds true for every thing called art, in every form of art, or called art.
Not at all like Pet Shop Boys, but who really is these days? Beyond Tennant and Lowe, no one has ever been very much like those Pet Shop Boys, actually.
Well, duh. More than that: TUH-DUH. TA-DA! It means the words! It means each and only what the words say. Read ’em and weep not! See? Right up there for you. SEE? See!
Context (since there’s every single context you or anyone could choose to clap on top of it or pretend-slide beneath any artwork) is keyhole.
TELL THEM ALBERT EINSTEIN AND COPERNICUS
Official audio only.
Vulgar?
Why be a turd about it, stuffing imaginary made-up “author’s intent” (beyond what the author actually DID do, DID make whole) into some fantasy “envelope-pushing” exercise?
Anyone who wants to pretend their free gift to the world means something other than what they actually made and gave is welcome to be that pretentious.
The world's address
What does it mean to me?
Whose song is it, any old way?
Everyone looks naked when you know the world's address
Some lovely story about what the artist went through prior to making the thing? Human interest, yes! We love to be deep in the gossip, we kind and faithful beings. Yet is this OF the artwork? No.
So…you can read the lyrics above. Those words, in that simple order? That IS what the song really means.
Hear!
The thing really done.
It is we the living who’ll each decide what it means: to each and all.
I men: you’d have to be a surefire every-miss dweeb of cretinous nature to credit what I have to say here with authority, or even a slick, greasy Greek booty-toot of value. GROSS. GROW UP, if so! Get a real load on!
Frankly, The Dead’ve never been the same since Garcia died, except on record and if you take a lot of drugs, too. Got Art?
I know you've deceived me
Am I serious?
We humans do love trivia, and some of us: we love it more than art.
The sales and marketing job (includes all backstory and behind-the-bio of the real maker, doer, makers or doers) is nothing to do with the genuine article: the act performed, the thing made.
It’s one motive, at least. If that’s your meaning then run off with it and see who’ll bow, buy, or slap a bow-tie on it for a garrotte. The rest of us?
A song made for public consumption has no “real meaning” beyond what it means to you: the hearer. The listener, ideally. The artist, the creator, the originator or the band of record merely bring you the best they could put out to move you, given available talent and production time. So?
Nobody could possibly credit my take over and above or underneath the text itself, the thing itself: the actual work and nothing else. Nothing but. All that’s in or within it. Right?
You know it.
They told you simply: by making the whole thing, nothing less. Nothing more. In every single word strong strung in sequence.
…this is all very well beyond what the thing itself means, or meant. It is new.
HAH. HA! No! How could I possibly be, about something as trite as art has in our day and age become? Grossaroo!
It means an “accomplished fact.” Something that has already been done, and there it is: “that’s-that.”
You decide. Purpose is what you put into life.
Meaning is what you get out of it.
Shall we uphold that craptastically egotistical self-shoveling attitude? Why should we? Because we, two should be famous for moving the world with what moves us in art? Hey.
“The text” here means only: the entire artwork of whatever kind. Picasso’s Guernica is a text. Citizen Kane is a text. “The World’s Address” is our text, for this instance.
I’m not sure if it’s like Wet Leg. I haven’t really drawn a bead on Wet Leg yet. Look.
You gonna tell us the mere author or creator of a work gets to decide for YOU what it means?
Who says what’s art? The Modernists united in a real cheap-shot art-critic sold and commanded zeitgeist ventriloquism voice: The Artist! Art Is Whatever The Artist Nominates As Art!
What kind of hack art critique confidence job (or “fanfic”) would you like us to call that crap?
Is that what you think of IT? Of art? Or if you’re a real capital-A ASS, of “Art”?
Nothing beyond what was literally made part of the song is the song’s meaning.
Popular, yes. That’s what vulgar originally meant.
A deft touch like Peter Gabriel, in such regards.
What more could one ask of a work of art? Sometime, maybe try to ask the song itself what it means.
I’m so mean I mean it all.
CALL THE MEN OF SCIENCE
This is each person’s moving contribution to any work of art: to say how it moved in you.
worn...etc.
Touch!
Every meaning is valid to the degree it can be supported from within the text.
It ain’t the thing. Is it?
Behold!
A place that's worn
I didn’t tell you what it meant.
Take it in every sensory or sensual way it exists, by any medium presented! Like, love, want, even need, and even share that with others! Your own lived experience of the thing itself, yeah-heah!
Everybody’s got one.
Care to have a listen?
I’ve got to be some kind of “sense, senses or sensual snob” who wants to root like King Tut on human growth hormones and steal your golden moment right out from under you, right?
Yes! You nailed it! A “full-on slob-mode aficionado of pop cultural forms” to boot! Who minds what I, some rando asshat off the internet, told YOU couched so hot, deep and hard in threadbare shorts, rocking and a-rolling on a huge leather sofa stolen from “schools” and “styles” of old thought, “BUD”? Not it!
Bull. The public has always known better than that. It isn’t novelty of theoretic conception that makes good art. It is truth. It is beauty. Which can include: hideous ugliness, if true. Or: hideous ugliness, if for some reason you the viewer, the onlooker, the innocent bystander, the paying customer or the passerby decide: I rather like the feel and style of that hideous thing.
Call it an affectionym, but be sure the other wants yours first. It isn’t a very high art to be sure, this dealing and doling of names. Lables and boxes, more often than not? Empty of everything but nerve, bile and gall. Turn your head and cough, please. Yes!
Kind of like John Linnell, John Flansburgh & The Band Of Dans (who hadn’t yet joined the bandwagon as of the above-limned song’s original finished debut).
It, whatever the heck it is or may be to someone, doesn’t really mean anything else but its own real features and properties. The thing itself is what must mean, and the only thing that can mean: to anyone, everyone, okay uh-huh alright forever and ever amen.
Nope. It isn’t the thing.
How are you moved? It’s not a f***ing contest. Why would anyone want to WIN a f***ing contest? Oh, that triple asterisk stands for “art” not “uck.” Pretty yucky, that droll substitution. Pretty disgusting, those who try to pass it off as “fresh.”
It means what it is, not what some paid or unpaid maker thinks it should mean to you. Kind of like oh, I don’t know, Neil Diamond? Neil Sedaka? Bing Crosby? I’ve no idea really. Elvis Costello? Aimee Mann? Sean Penn’s sister-in-law? The Beatles? Who gives a rat’s toss? These people were paid and paid handsomely to prettily dish up something for us, for us to take in and mean, and feel. And sure, think! Why not?
It is trivia.
Give us what cha got, “artist.” If indeed you consider yourself an artist: give it up. For all we the living, for any and each who might be moved, AND HOW.
Context is not “key.”
Not in some misbegotten competition with the dead.
So be it, then!
Big “A” or little? Done for Art’s sake, or just for free sushi and sake? Got anything for us, anything for each or all? GIVE IT UP, HOMO SAPIEN.
Q. What song are you listening to right now? What does it mean to you?
Why should anyone swallow it? Except for what IT truly is? Your own original production! At best or at worst, “based on” or “inspired by” the thing itself.
Answer one. “What song” indeed! I’m listening to "The World's Address":
No critic and no investor, no, not even any Capital-A Author or Major League Maker can add one jot, jolt, titter or teardrop to the finished work of art. As it was, or as it lasts in its finished form.
Here’s the musical recording from the band They call “TMBG”
In many circles (and the glorious art that erupts and cruises forth from these circles is not to be puked at), what’s vulgar is pretty always a-gonna be a good bet: to pop.
Disabuse you of that “secret meaning” or “real meaning” nonsense notion pronto and galore! I mean consistently, coherently, cogently and with integrity: in every onstage bout of audience-aimed grateful candor, plus every interview segment you’re likely catch them in, speaking for themselves to all the world: unabashed, unashamed, not too guardedly at all.
Whatever each viewer, hearer, taker-in and receiver “gets” out of it is, if anything, that critic or fan’s own personal production. Of what? Meaning. Value. Worth. Call it by any metric you can lay forth or set out: it’s pure personal judgment in play now, dog. Cur. Bitch?
Yet…
Under every garment I can see the world's address
Now my tearstains on the wall reflect an ugly sight
Taste!
Let’s not get personal. A woman, even a very young and competitive woman far too good for the likes, loves, needs or wants of me (or you, for that matter) is only called a “dog” by some sour grapes loser. Or! Hey, if she must love dogs, maybe she won’t even mind being called in a doggy style?
Is “it” an art at all?
Now pull the other one! How did it make YOU feel, about your mother for instance?
No need to confess