Birdhouse in Your Soul

"Birdhouse in Your Soul" was one of four songs on Flood produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley; these four songs alone exhausted two-thirds of the album's budget.[1] The track was selected for release as a single early on.[2]

The melody to "Birdhouse in Your Soul" was written several years prior to its recording for Flood. John Linnell has stated that he "shoehorned" the lyric into the existing melody.[1] The lyric, which is narrated from the perspective of a blue nightlight shaped like a canary, is hyper-associative, rapidly connecting disparate topics such as Jason and the Argonauts and The Longines Symphonette.[2] Elizabeth Sandifer and S. Alexander Reed have noted movement between lyrical themes is a recurring motif throughout Flood.[2] However, Linnell has commented that he feels the lyrics ultimately sound like stand-in "dummy lyrics".[3]

"Birdhouse in Your Soul" features an unconventional drum beat, which was programmed by Linnell, wherein the snare drum sounds on every beat. During production, Linnell created a demo using a more standard pop drum beat with the snare drum only on the backbeats. However, Langer and Winstanley emphatically rejected this change, which Linnell credits as saving the song.[2]

Musically, Reed and Sandifer note that the song makes an unanticipated jump from its initial key of key of C major to E-flat major, and then back to C major. The frequent key changes (18 in total) may be a product of the album's largely digital composition and production; they call the album in general "modular" in its movement between musical ideas. The track's later shifts to F-sharp minor and A major divide the octave into equal intervals.[4] The music also interpolates elements of "Summer in the City" by The Lovin' Spoonful. The car horn-like trumpet sound in the bridge of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" recalls the sounds of traffic in "Summer in the City" and both songs use similar rhythms in their chord progressions. Linnell states that these references were inspired by the intense heat during the album's recording in the summer of 1989.[4]

In April 1990, They Might Be Giants appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to promote the release of Flood. As part of the appearance, Linnell and Flansburgh performed "Birdhouse in Your Soul" with Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band. Severinsen's unusually fast count-in resulted in a performance with a noticeably higher tempo than the album recording. The band adopted a similar tempo for subsequent live performances.[5]

The music video for "Birdhouse in Your Soul" was directed by Adam Bernstein and filmed in the New York County's Surrogate's Courthouse building in Manhattan in 1989.[6] The video features Linnell and Flansburgh moving and performing erratically amidst a group of dancers dressed in red plaid shirts. In the video, the dancers wear masks made from sunglasses affixed with an image of the eyes of William Allen White, whose face is used frequently in the band's visual material.[7] These props were designed by John Flansburgh.[8] In an article on They Might Be Giants' music videos, Emily Petermann speculates that the zombie-like behavior of the dancers, coupled with the video's warehouse setting, evokes "oppressed factory workers". Petermann finds this to be at odds with the song's "cheerful" music. On the other hand, the "non sequitur" lyrics and "surreal" musical elements—such as modulation—are complemented by moments of "nonsense" in the video, such as when "[Linnell and Flansburgh's] performance becomes embedded in a bizarre situation or the performance is abandoned altogether".[7]

"Birdhouse in Your Soul" received positive attention from critics. In his review of Flood for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it one of the band's "finest singles".[9] Reviewing the single alone, Stewart Mason elaborates that, compared to previous releases, the high production value highlights Linnell and Flansburgh's "knack for dynamics and arrangement". Mason also speculates that the song's popularity stems from the modest depth of its lyric, which is somewhat oblique on the surface but ultimately "easy to figure out", giving the listener a sense of pride in their understanding.[10] Chris Willman, writing for the Los Angeles Times, predicted the track would become a "college radio standard".[11]

All songs by They Might Be Giants.

7" single & cassette single

1. "Birdhouse in Your Soul" – 3:19
2. "Hot Cha" – 1:34

12" single & CD single

1. "Birdhouse in Your Soul" – 3:19
2. "Hot Cha" – 1:34
3. "Hearing Aid" – 3:26
4. "Ant" – 1:53

Notes

• "Hot Cha" and "Hearing Aid" are taken from Flood.

They Might Be Giants

• John Flansburgh – guitar
• John Linnell – vocals, keyboards

Additional musicians

• Mark Feldman – violin
• Frank London – trumpet (sampled)

Production

• Clive Langer – producer
• Alan Winstanley – producer
• Roger Moutenot – engineer, mixing

A cover of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" was featured in the Pushing Daisies episode "Pigeon", which premiered on October 24, 2007. This version was arranged and performed by series composer Jim Dooley with vocals from actors Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene. The cover also appears on the show's official soundtrack.[17] In a 2015 Decider article revisiting the episode, Joe Reid wrote that the selection of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" contributed to "a moment that must have felt tailor-made for the audience members who responded to it".[18]

In 2008, Dooley was awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for his work on Pigeon.[19]

In April 2020, American singer-songwriter Cory Branan self-released a limited-edition EP entitled Now That’s What I Call Isolation, Vol 1, which included an acoustic cover of “Birdhouse in your Soul.”

In 2003, Lemon Demon included a cover of "Birdhouse In Your Soul" on his album, Live From the Haunted Candle Shop.

• "Birdhouse in Your Soul" at This Might Be A Wiki
• Birdhouse in Your Soul EP on This Might Be A Wiki
• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics