Flood Quotes

“Linnell: 'Some records that come out today only have ten songs, or less.'

Flansburgh: 'This makes us angry.'

Linnell: 'But instead of cursing the darkness, John and I have decided to do something about it. We've put out a record with nineteen songs on it.'

Flansburgh: 'And that's why our record is better.'

Behind this jokes lurks a telling possibility. If nonsense, variability, and excess are the hallmarks of 'cornucopia,' then the songwriting practices of clarity, focus, and restraint are the stuff of famine - certainly boring, and quite possibly stupid.”
― S. Alexander Reed, Flood

“A big part of what separates childhood from adulthood is discernment - the apprehension of the world's dizziness, the channeling of its everythingness into sensible categories. This goes for intake and output alike, with a large part of growing up being an education in behavioral propriety and conversational relevance. The sort of transmodality by which a person becomes a bag of groceries (as in "Dead") makes much less sense to a well-adjusted, reasoning adult than to a child, who has encountered few models that explain either where people ultimately go or where grocery bags really come from.

This plays into why the band's music always strikes adult reviewers as quirky, but can seem unremarkably factual to young kids...

...They Might Be Giants provide a particularly safe sort of rebelliousness - one that is more invested in negating boundaries than breaking through them. It allows for individuality without getting dangerous. And, if we're being honest, this is part of what makes it ideal music for the middle school 'gifted' set, a group of variously outcast kids who, nevertheless, don't actually want to piss off their parents.”
― S. Alexander Reed, Flood