It all started with this album...
Although my fixation began in January of 2026, me and TMBG go back a little further than you'd expect. My best pal and also brother (Julian) brought them to my attention in the early summer of 2025. I had decided to check out their song Istanbul (Not Constantinople) since it was near the top of their spotify profile (I do not support or use anymore!!). And funnily enough I had breifly heard it once! That sparked my interest, but nothing crazy took off from that revelation. Just a quick save into a playlist and the occasional boogie. Fast forward a little to July of 2025, and I was listening to Istanbul. I didn't realise I had not added a song to my queue so it auto played to the next song... Your racist Friend. That was the song that did it for me. I had found it very relateable, since I have had a fair share of experiences with friends who would stand by their racist friends. It was not pleasant, but that song encapsulated things i have had to deal with. From that point the only logical decision for me to make was to listen to the entire album! Flood!
After doing so Flood became THAT album for me... track after track was just banger after banger... it was like, who are these guys? Your racist Friend, Hearing Aid and most importantly Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love all changed me. I could honestly say that for all the songs on flood. That's how it became apart of my daily album rotations, yet still, somehow it had not clicked inside my head to research anymore about them. Listened to their breakthrough album with no idea who was behind it all. Fast forward to December of 2025. My bff was talking about them much more often, so I was being familiarised with the Johns! (I will add though, remembering their last names was hell... so Id refer to them as the Johns to simplify things...)
Now knowing the exsitence of them both, the next logical choice was to start watching music videos. Im so glad I can remember, my first music video was Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head Which was on their self titled debut (1986),They Might Be Giants. After that I found It funny.... but I also liked the cinematography for the video. It was also their first music video, if im not mistaken. The funny aspect made me want to learn more about them and so i watched a couple interviews. Yappersburgh and Shynell really captured my eye... and from that point on thats when the addiction all started. I read up on all the info I could get my grubby hands on and here I am today!! Discography cleared, noticed by Flans a good few times and fully knowledge loaded when it comes to them! This was deffo one of the times where my story of getting into a band was much longer and spaced out, most the time the story goes: 'finds song, addicted, loops, watches an interview and finally new personality unlock.' But anyways thats my TMBG story!!!
