Part 1: The Rules
dear god this was a bad idea.
they might be giants is a band that’s made a bunch of songs, and a lot of those songs have music videos. at some point early in 2017 or very late in 2016, i decided that i should rank all of the videos from the best to the worst.
the first step of this process was finding all of the they might be giants songs that had official music videos. that list was over 160 entries long, so i decided to narrow it down so that i wouldn’t lose my mind trying to make this list. i did come close to losing my mind anyways, but there’s no way i would have made it without the specific criteria. anyways, here are the rules of this list:
- the song has to be on an official they might be giants release. this means it’s either on an album, an EP, or a compilation.
- children’s albums do not count. this means that videos from No!, Here Come The ABC’s, Here Come the 123’s, Here Comes Science, and Why? are not included in this list unless they appear on a different album, EP, or compilation.
- the song has to be a studio version. this means that the song was not recorded live at a show. this removes songs like Santa Cruz and Disappointing Show from the list but would not apply to a song that is performed live in a studio, such as Sleepwalkers.
- the music video has to be commissioned by the band. this means that none of the fan-made videos count (because they were made via a contest and not through a direct commission by the band) and none of the instances where a they might be giants song is used to make a music video outside of the direct action of the band count, like the Tiny Toons Istanbul not Constantinople. This also excludes music videos made for television shows, such as All Alone or King Weed.
- no repeat songs on this list for any reason whatsoever.
this narrowed down the list to about 107 music videos. i may have missed one (including the charlottesville venue song which for some reason has disappeared from the internet) due to some technicality in the rules, but i’m pretty sure i’ve gotten all the videos that fall underneath these criteria.
fun fact: the first time i tried doing this i attempted using an algorithm to sort the videos with a numerical value. about 10 videos into it i decided that it fucking sucked and instead used the tried and true Power Ranking method:
The Power Ranking Method:
basically you just take any video and put it in between a video that it is better than and a video that it’s worse than and do that for every single video
if you would like to watch along, here is a YouTube playlist of all of the videos in the order that they appear on this list. if i tried to embed the videos into this article, it would crash your computer. i know this because at first i embeded all the videos into the article and it crashed my computer. below are the videos in order and some light commentary on their placement. okay enough of this here we go
Part 2: The List
106: PREPARE
so there has to be a worst video, and so i picked this one mostly because every once in a while it says “you are now listening to dial-a-song” in giant white text. basically every bunch of 10 videos or whatever you could switch up the order pretty easily.
105: GOT GETTING UP SO DOWN
going to be honest up front: there are so many of these videos it’s going to be nearly impossible to write a comment on every single one of them, and (as i tried before) loading all of the videos onto one page literally crashes my computer. on the other hand, just having a list of video titles is weird so i’m going to try to say something on every line. maybe it won’t be related at all. also i’m rushing this right now because i have a feeling new music videos are coming soon and i swear to god if i have to add another fucking video to this editor note: this was written before any of the videos for Dial-a-Song 2018 were released. this list has not been edited to include any of those songs, and will not be edited until the author (also me) decides to add another 32+ songs to this already much-too-long list.
104: BILLS, BILLS, BILLS
i honestly don’t know how to feel about a cover from av undercover being on a legit tmbg album which is why i consider every song after shape shifter not being a canon song on phone power. the album ends at that song and then there are three bonus songs
103: TESLA
why this video instead of the half-hour long one with remixes? because i said so
102: STARRY EYES
this is one of my favorite unreleased songs from dial-a-song, and it’s also a cover, and also doesn’t have a Real Music Video, but with all of these random footage things i try to figure out how exactly they ended up in a position to get the footage. maybe it’s somebody else who has their name in the description of the video but i’m not going to go back and fact-check this list. you try doing this and then come back to me
101: THE FELLOWSHIP OF HELL
isn’t it kinda fucked up that “album raises new and troubling questions” isn’t actually an album, but instead it’s a compilation? i mean it’s not really that fucked up, but, you know
100: BLACK OPS ALT.
i have a weird relationship to this song, which i’ll touch on more later in this list. at first i really liked this song, and then i really didn’t.
99: APOPHENIA
i have an idea for a gravity falls fanfiction based off of this album that will probably never happen because i’m a terrible writer
98: AND MOM AND KID
i used the official video for this instead of the video that was made for that one campaign when this song came out. that video was much better
97: WORDS ARE LIKE
this is the best example of why making this list was hard. even with all of the exceptions to the rules, weird music videos fell through the cracks. i think this is in idelwild? idk i’m not looking up anything on this ever again
96: IN FACT
the first time i tried to listen to the album join us i stopped at the song “let your hair hang down” because i was bored of it and also because we were checking into the airport in Lagos, Nigeria. anyways i stumbled upon this song and then listened to the album and it’s one of my favorites now. the moral of the story is that i’m a bad fan
95: VOTE OR DON’T
yeah this is in dial a song direct. i had to look up why i included this when i was writing this
94: IMPOSSIBLY NEW
this music video is so bad that i didn’t realize how touching this song is because i was just looking at the music video and being like “what is happening?” it’s also mixed in a way where flans’ harmonies are way louder in the mix than the melody as sung by linnell. it’s an odd song but i love it
93: O WE
a comment thread on this video compares this song to Matalii ja Mustii from the BINKY episodes of Arthur and while that can be debated let’s talk about how Arthur called Vocaloid six years before it happened
92: HATE THE VILLANELLE
true story: my younger brother had an assignment where he had to make a song fit into iambic pentameter and i reccomended this song to him because i’m an idiot and didn’t know that villanelles are already in iambic pentameter. he ended up using a different song because to him, using this song would be cheating. he now goes to a more prestigous university than i do
91: NOW IS STRANGE
hold on one second can i play this riff on guitar from memory? let’s find out.
turns out the answer is no
90: ROCK CLUB
shout out to @tmbotg on twitter, who tweeted the lyrics “we love all the people” at one point before DAS 2015 which is why i knew about this song before DAS 2015. this animation creeps me out. this is also very much the point where the random slideshow portion of this list of videos ends
89: DALLAS (TREES)
an idea that i’ve had for a while is making a playlist where all the songs have one word in common. this is the they might be giants song i would use for the word “bees”
88: HELLO MRS. WHEELYKE
like i know that the johns are getting old and are as old as my parents (their first album is as old as my parent’s marriage is) but this video was the first time i looked at them and was like “oh yeah they’re like fifty-something year old dad guys”.
87: CAN’T KEEP JOHNNY DOWN
for some reason i thought that i always hated this video but it turns out that i commented that it was “Freaking brilliant” when it came out
86: THE VELVET APE
this song goes hard as hell and the music video creeps me out.
85: ECNALUMBA
a classic example of how editing that was just a touch sharper would make a video extremely good. instead, it’s here
84: WE LIVE IN A DUMP
this video would be good if there weren’t any of those sound effects. sound effects in a music video is bad
83: YOU’RE ON FIRE
i hate this video. like i truly hate this video. but would it be fair to a list if i just ranked them based off of how much i liked it personally? i tried to look at each video based on how well it worked as a music video: does it elevate the song? does it present a concept in the video or make you feel a certain way? is there a level of technical achievement worth noting? these are the ways that i ranked these because if it was ranked purely on how any of them made me feel in a moment this would be way closer to the bottom with its Loafer-ass talking hamburger
82: MUSIC JAIL, PT. 1 & 2
i love the facial expressions of the bird
81: THE SUMMER BREEZE
all i can think of is the “ello govnah” episode of regular show. remember regular show? it was good, and then it wasn’t, and then it was really good, and then it wasn’t. after the dust settles the “cartoon renaissance” is actually gonna kind of suck in comparison to the things that came before and after it but people will be so nostalgic for it that it’ll still be heralded as this false peak of sorts.
80: SOLD MY MIND TO THE KREMLIN
this project has been so exhausting that i’m very tempted to just use a donald trump joke for this entry so that i can finish it. i haven’t written these in order and i’m sure there’s a lack of continuity with some of these jokes, and i swear there was somewhere that i was going with this and i completely forgot what it was. and like the one above this one is about cartoons and not they might be giants at all. anyways i dare you to make a better list than this one
79: ANAHEIM
i actually hadn’t heard this song before i did this project. it was kind of a “what the fuck?” moment for me
78: I AM ALONE
the house i’ve lived in the longest actually had the three way folding bathroom mirrors so at some point after this song came out i mimed the entire thing inside of the bathroom
77: NO COPS
fuck the police
76: WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?
how in the everloving fuck does this video have 193,000 hits? like i checked because i love the bit that has “unloved” in frame but like. what. it has the most hits of any of the dial-a-song videos, period. why? where? whom?
75: I WASN’T LISTENING
also, let’s make it painfully clear right now that some of these description things are going to be awful. like really bad. i’m not even saying they’re lazy, i’m saying that the descriptor thing that i wrote will be literally, factually, bad. deal with it
74: SNAIL SHELL
it makes sense that this is the song from John Henry (my zodiac album i guess) that got a music video, but it’s also… it doesn’t fit the vibe of the album as a video at all. John Henry feels like it needs one of the Dial-A-Song 2K15 videos to go along with it, with like a bunch of kids running around with swords or something. also, of all of the TMBG albums, John Henry has the best songs that don’t have live videos on YouTube. the album in second place? Nanobots, one of my least favorite albums
73: OMNICORN
omnicorn’s the one. just like nixon.
72: ICKY
vore
71: SHAPE SHIFTER
this video gives me the fucking creeps. thanks i hate it
70: END OF THE ROPE
this song blew my mind when i listened to it over the phone. it’s still a good song but like i remember listening to it and being like “holy shit”. man, 2015 was a weird
69: VANCOUVER
nice
68: NANOBOTS
my next list will be a ranking of apocolypse situations within they might be giants songs. not really but if you want to do that feel free, just drop a link to my twitter handle
67: SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT DETROIT
flans is talking to me at gunpoint
66: ASHBURY (STONE PONY)
fun fact: the “me got” bothered me the first time i heard this song. i was odd. i am odd
65: I WAS DANCING IN THE LESBIAN BAR
god i wish that was me
64: ANOTHER WEIRDO
most of the time-lapsy videos are ranked a lot lower than this one, but something about the time lapses in this video specifically fit the mood of the song so well that it gets ranked a lot higher
63: CANADA HAUNTS ME
i don’t know why this works
62: I MADE A MESS
for a full week after this song came out i thought it was a fugue. it’s not, but it is fugueish.
61: BOSS OF ME
this is a weird one that i think counts. it’s a strange video that kind of focuses on the band but also is about the television show? there isn’t an easy way to find out whether or not the band actually commissioned this but they’re literally in it so i have to make that assumption that the video that they literally appear in had their official approval
60: COLLEGE TOWN
fully unrelated: while doing work for this piece i looked at the old faq from the tmbg site and found this questions that i laughed at loud at so i’m putting it here
59: IT SAID SOMETHING
i don’t remember what concept i was trying to show to a person. it may have been the concept of doing this very list. anyways i think this was a video that i showed as a comparison, and while as a twenty-three year old they might be giants fan who has been listening to the band pretty actively for the past decade i should have remembered that showing people they might be giants clips out of context can be a disorienting experience for them, the person watching it was very confused. this video maybe needs to be higher but this is the last descriptor bit that i’m writing so i’m not changing anything else about this list.
58: UNPRONOUNCEABLE
i relate so hard with the narrator in this piece but i also wish a little bit that i was the subject
57: DOCTOR WORM
do i not own something that has the song doctor worm on it? that can’t be right. yep it’s not right it’s on user’s guide, which just isn’t on this laptop. you would think that after having a laptop for half a year you would have transferred all the files from your old laptop, but it turns out that i have depression~~~
56: ALL THE LAZY BOYFRIENDS
speaking of depression, i swear this segway was unintentional
55: CLAP YOUR HANDS
this song from No! appears on the Idlewild complimation and therefore makes this list. if i had tried to do all of the children’s music as well i would have died
54: AAA
as the kids say; big mood. (bood.) see, like this one is one of the worst ones, probably, but i’m tired. i’ve got finals and shit, you know? it’s hard
53: GLEAN
whenever i see the name of this song i always think that it’s the song Whole Lot of Glean. and it never is. be right back i’m gonna listen to Whole Lot of Glean again
52: I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER
did you think that was a gag, in the previous entry? i literally stopped what i was doing to listen to the song Whole Lot of Glean, and then when that song ended, i went back to this.
51: READ A BOOK
50: ALBANY (THE EGG)
tangentially related: please watch the television show Danger and Eggs. it’s on Amazon, i know, but it’s really good.
49: THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT
weird how an album made over 10 years ago in a specific political climate has become double relevant to the current political climate. also, fuck you if you feel nostalgic about the bush years.
48: SOMETIMES A LONELY WAY
i don’t know why this video resonates so deeply with me. it might just be the song that elevates the video instead of the other way around, like music videos are supposed to do
47: INSECT HOSPITAL+
i love this animation style and i hate this album. that adds up to spot 47 apparently
46: ISTANBUL (NOT CONSTANTINOPLE)
confession: i wasn’t a fan of the tiny toon shorts
45: I LOVE YOU FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS
another example of a music video that i don’t like very much but is ranked pretty high because i have to look at these from the perspective of the craft of making a music video
44: I AM INVISIBLE
i feel like i could get away with copy pasting some of these descriptions into other spots if the spots where it was relevant weren’t directly next to each other. like i can’t say “another example of a music video that i don’t like very much but is ranked pretty high because i have to look at these from the perspective of the craft of making a music video” because i just said that, you know?
43: TROUBLE AWFUL DEVIL EVIL
there’s a point in this video where you can see the clouds moving at what appears to be one frame at a time which cultivates this form of dread that the song itself alludes to. i have no idea if this kind of thing was intentional (although honestly it was probably more to do with limitations of the video recording equipment) but it works real well
42: DAMN GOOD TIMES
another they might be giants video that scared me as a child. someday, i will have this guitar solo locked down, but i haven’t gotten there yet.
41: LOS ANGELES
is los angeles the only venue song they play at non-venue venues? if so, does that mean it’s the best venue song? i heard it at the wolf’s den in Connecticut the one time i got to see them live and it was almost an odd moment. what a great show that was. we didn’t show up early enough to be inside the venue but somebody helped me climb up onto the rock so i got a great view
40.5: BROOKLYN
you may be wondering “why is this song rated a half number when every other one has a normal ranking?” i’m glad you asked! it’s because when i wrote the list the first time i forgot to add this one into the ranking and i had got to the point where i had numbered all of the videos in this document and i’m not about to change 66 numbers because of a silly mistake. so yeah i suck, i know
40: MARTY BELLER MASK
when whitney houston died my first thoughts were about this song, specifically. like how weird it was gonna be now that she’s dead to say that out loud. i was actually at this awful church thing and the pastor started talking about how whitney houston is in hell now. the moral of this story is that you shouldn’t go to church things
39: ERASE
why does this video work? i don’t know
38: WITH THE DARK
the more i think about it, was there literally anything from The Else that didn’t make me uncomfortable when I first saw it? was there anything between Long Tall Weekend and Join Us that didn’t make me uncomfortable when I saw it that wasn’t explicitly made for children?
37: BASTARD WANTS TO HIT ME
so as a kid i was a Good Christian and one of the rules of being a Good Christian is not listening to music with cusses in it. in effect, this song made me very uncomfortable as a child
36: EXPERIMENTAL FILM
it’s kinda fucked up that homestar runner is a dated reference now to a lot of the youths
35: I’M ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT
another great example of a video that many people would be like “why the fuck would you rank this so high?” if you don’t like my ranking make your own list. actually, only do it if you do it in a way that’s not as cool and good as this list is. actually actually do whatever you want i’m not your mom.
34: DEFINITION OF GOOD
while dial-a-song 2015 may have somewhat flooded this list with a bunch of music videos, one thing that is very apparent is that DAS also allowed for some of the most abstract tmbg videos, which says a lot coming from a band that filmed videos for the first couple of albums by randomly dancing in various locations
33: WALKING MY CAT NAMED DOG
i was going to make a comment about the actual song but what came into my head was the “francophile” line from cabinet battle 2 from hamilton. i think my brain is unraveling
32: THEY’LL NEED A CRANE
i think about the phrase “professional old guys” constantly.
31: LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY OPERATION
break up song of the century
30: I CAN HELP THE NEXT IN LINE
i think i ended up only saying “i can help the next in line” like three times when i was working at mcdonalds. i hated working up front because any time i was up front it meant that everything was a shitshow
29: TO A FOREST
spoopy
28: ASHEVILLE (THE ORANGE PEEL)
i don’t remember when this was but i know that there was a point that i latched onto this as a breakup song. it might have been an actual break up or not, because my memory is trash. revisiting it through this project, it’s a real good breakup song. it’s melodramatic as fuck, yes, but not all of us can have breakups that aren’t awash in melodrama.
wait, no, fuck, that was during all of the mady ellars shit. oh my god. i forgot about that fucking .
it was probably during all of that stuff. if you want to know make sure to like, comment, and subscribe
27: PITTSBURGH (MR. SMALL’S)
author’s note: i wrote all of these little blurbs after making the list so i can;t remember all of the details of the videos in it so all i want you to know is that after coming back to this monster of a project i looked at this title and thought of it sung in the voice that linnell uses in the mr. klaw song. mister smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaals
26: ELECTRONIC ISTANBUL
i just wish that they kept the “I… S… T…” opener in the actual album track. it’s so good
25: CLOISONNE
i thought that this was actually video of a live take instead of having a live take being overdubbed on multiple takes of a video. this makes sense to do and is how most live videos are done but it bothered me for some reason. not that this actually matters
24: THE GUITAR
i don’t know if this video was one of the reasons i wanted to learn how to play the bass guitar. i wouldn’t be surprised if it was but there are a couple of other things clearly higher on the influence list, like the song A Self Called Nowhere
23: DAYLIGHT
i love this song so much
22: ELEPHANTS
this is the most Kids Song kid song that this band has ever made
21: THINKING MACHINE
this video, specifically, reminds me of my ex. i don’t want to talk about it
20: I’M A COWARD
i am a sucker for sleight of hand, and it’s done so well here. more music videos should use sleight of hand tbh
19: ANSWER
flansberg described Glean as an “impossibly good” album and, you know, he kinda has a point on that one
18: DON’T LET’S START
would this video be higher if i hadn’t read with my own two eyes people discussing the “crotch shot” in this one? maybe. okay yes please don’t hurt me
17: SHE WAS A HOTEL DETECTIVE
i happen to own every single one of the “adult” full length albums but i don’t have any version of Pink that has the single mix of this song, which is okay because i prefer the album mix. i think. the point of this is that i own three copies of Pink
16: YOU PROBABLY GET THAT A LOT
remember how big of a deal it was that the johns were using their own likeness in music videos again having not done that since doctor worm? maybe it wasn’t a big deal but it was a big deal to me
15: MOLES, HOUNDS, BEARS, BEES, AND HARES
between this video and elephants i’m kind of in love with this animation? for a while my secret twitter profile had the squirrel from this video as the icon. just the way it sways side to side while playing the trumpet
14: PURPLE TOUPEE
the bit a minute in where the transparent linnell goes to black and white blew my freaking mind the first times i watched it. this was one of my favorite songs for a long time, and of all of the dance-around videos that they ended up making, this one was probably the most interesting from a music video perspective? color is so important in each of the portions of it and while there isn’t a moment of it that’s iconic (unlike almost any of the other videos from this era: this is the only one missing from the particlemen youtube channel) it’s really strongly put together
13: UNDERWATER WOMAN
remember how, earlier in this piece, i mentioned getting bored of tmbg songs and then missing out on some good things later? this song, and dial a song 2015. whoops
12: WHEN WILL YOU DIE?
there’s those people that make those giant designs using sand and then after appreciating the design that they’ve made they destroy the entire thing and being able to let go of a piece of art that willingly has always made me feel weird. seeing that whole process but with a giant hearse as monster truck physically pained me the first hundred times or so i’ve seen this video
11: GOOD TO BE ALIVE
flansberg is quoted as saying that glean is an “impossibly good” album, and you know what? yeah. did i make this comment already? i really hope not
10: I’LL BE HAUNTING YOU
i don’t think i’ve talked about this yet but i write fanfiction on the internet because one of the things i do is think about things that i like a whole bunch. anyways i had a plan for a gravity falls fic based off of the album phone power and this song would be about the twins dealing with the trauma of an otherworldly being haunting them in their minds. if somebody wants to steal this idea 1) put a link to this list at the description 2) include the phrases “banana souflee” and “pejorative”
9: MADAM, I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL
in my opinion, this video is the defining line of where the videos begin to pull away from the pack of the rest of the other videos. if somebody else decides to do this kind of list and puts anything from this video down in the top three or whatever i wouldn’t be at all surprised
8: OLDER
the establishing shot of the world trade center in conjunction with the voice over is one of the most unintentionally haunting things i’ve seen in my entire life. it’s situational irony cranked to eleven and makes this video darker than it was ever meant to be.
7: ANA NG
as the whole “johnsdance” genre goes, this is the defining example of it
6: THE STATUE GOT ME HIGH
the first time i listened to this song it was while watching this video. it scared the shit out of me.
5: (PUT YOUR HANDS INSIDE) THE PUPPET HEAD
this video is so goofy
4: BLACK OPS
1) read the description of this video before watching it 2) when this music video came out, i hated this song, and i hated this album. i still don’t like the album, but after a while the song really grew on me. in that context, i watched this video and my mind was freaking blown. however, when i watched the video while i didn’t like the song, i just was really bored. that’s the only reason that this video isn’t ranked higher than it is right now.
3: BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL
2: I’M IMPRESSED
this video scared me the first time that i watched it as a relatively tiny child a freaking decade ago, but it’s so brilliant. when i started this list i was convinced that this was going to be the number one video because everything about it is so impressive (pun intended).
1: SPOILER ALERT
this video is so good. so so so so so good. maybe it’s just carried by the song but like dang it’s so fresh and clean. when i started this list i didn’t think it was going to take my top spot, and to be honest (just like at basically any point in this list) i could switch some of these videos around. basically any video in the top 4 could be a number one and i’d be like “yeah”. but this video is so fucking good. shrug emoji
Part 3: The Aftermath
of all of the things that i’ve learned in school about writing, one of them is that essays need conclusions that tie together the piece and make an argument to the reader that what they read and what you wrote has any value at all. this is very hard to do when you make a list over the course of the year which arguably has little to no value to society at all. so instead of writing a conclusion, i’ll leave you with a jon bois tweet:
