Coming Soon: "Not Only But Especially For The Ladies"
The observations on this page are meant to highlight patterns between songs, not to reveal the definitive meaning of any individual song. Many songs are named here because they share interesting thematic or structural similarities for comparison, not because I believe they are really about sex or gender.
Now, on to interpretation!
Many songs written by John Linnell distinguish between women and men seemingly for convenient dialogue tagging. Referring to pairs of people as woman/man, boy/girl, makes it clear that there are two different people in a conversation (and suggests a relationship between them) without having to name them:
- As in Unrelated Thing, "Said the woman to the man";
- As in They'll Need A Crane, "Lad's gal is all he has, gal's gladness hangs upon the love of lad";
- As in Stone Cold Coup D'État, "Son sees the secret signal on his sister's face; Dad smiles at his wife";
- As in New Hampshire, which plays with this by losing track of the number of people in a conversation and leaving one of them quite literally the odd man out, "Woman wonders who's your itchy friend, woman says I thought he was with you, woman says I thought he was with you".
In these conversations, communication is often difficult and differences in personality cause tension. But that tension is usually very personal, rarely referencing broad ideas about "woman behavior" versus "man behavior".
In fact, women and men in these songs are frequently equal in number, importance, and experiences. When illustrating an idea, it's often applied to a "she" and a "he" back-to-back. Each new character (introduced by a new set of pronouns) serves as a new bullet point in a list of equivalent examples:
- As in Dog, "He's/She's the kind of dog..."
- As in No Answer, "Though she may wonder; He'll always wonder";
- As in I've Got A Fang, "Girlfriend took me to meet her dad/mom";
- As in Whistling In The Dark, "A woman/man came up to me and said..."
- As in Certain People I Could Name, "Is he/she/it reminding you of anyone we know?"
- As in This Is Only Going To Go One Way, "He knows he's often dreamt of shortening her life, she's felt her hand discreetly moving for the kitchen knife";
- As in Tractor, "Try though she may she'll never peel away your soul; He's met his match in your uncompromising ways";
- As in Withered Hope, where "she" (Withered Hope), "he" (Sad Sack) and "it" (the motorbike) form a loop of unrequited love.
I'm calling this approach "sex as linguistic category" because it makes less use of interpersonal theories of gender (other than maybe equality feminism) than it does grammatical gender. It relies on the existence of clear, separate, fixed categories, but the categories exist more as a structural convenience than a description of a person.
In many cases, the mirror-image, gender-agnostic quality is strong enough that the pronouns could be flipped without significantly changing the song's meaning or tone. What does it tell us when a character is a man? Well, just that he's not a woman—she's the other one, who's not the man. Little else not explicitly stated need be inferred.
Women & Men is probably John Linnell's most immediately identifiable song "about gender", and it's an excellent example of the things we've discussed above. This song presents humankind as made up of two even, matched halves. There is nothing that men are said to do without women doing the same, nor vice versa.
The objective-sounding voice of the narrator does conceal a few sex-based social assumptions: that men and women pair off based on love, and that those pairs can produce children. Somewhere, deep down, the symmetry of men and women is driven by reproductive sex... but that part happens in the privacy of the jungle, so it's none of our business and not really the point.
Ultimately, the song isn't trying to make a statement about gender relations, or even sex: it's about population migration as a humanity-wide phenomenon. The social factors that might shape this process are left out—achieving unusually broad neutrality, but perhaps also glossing over enough to be misleading.
Many songs by John Flansburgh use gender to describe a character's actions, particularly when it comes to romance. "Being a man" is like a job description, with behaviors that have to be learned and practiced:
- As in Narrow Your Eyes, "I don't want to shake your father's hand and act like a man";
- As in Authenticity Trip, "Now I'm in these classes just to be your man";
- As in You'll Miss Me, "It must be raining 'cause a man ain't supposed to cry";
- As in Too Tall Girl, "There's no kind of guidebook or catalog; to get to her a boy's got to calculate";
- As in Extra Savoir-Faire (literally, extra know-how), "I know just what to do when the ladies come 'round; what is left for me to prove?"
These characters don't experience gender nearly as symmetrically. They're more aware of the social pressures which push men and women to act, and to treat each other, very differently.
This push/pull can be enjoyable, or it can take on a stressful, Us-versus-Them quality. These characters may cluster in shared-gender-goal groups in order to seek advice or discuss romantic experiences:
- As in It's Kickin' In, "Let's hear the boyfriends say it";
- As in It's Fun To Steal, "In the ladies' room you're all they're talking about";
- As in Too Tall Girl, where advice for getting to the girl is delivered by a chorus of men;
- As in Operators Are Standing By, "Making jokes about their old boyfriends (That's enough talking, ladies)";
- As in Take Out The Trash, "Girl, why not take out the trash? I'm not saying all the boys are the same, but some boys are the same".
Note "shared gender goals", not simply "shared gender". (Is the narrator of Take Out The Trash a woman?) In these songs, the ideas of "acting like/being a man" and "acting like/being a woman" aren't actually exclusive. Most frequently, this shows up when women act like men or are given male titles for fun:
- As in Out Of Jail, "I could say she's to blame, say she's the man of this cautionary tale";
- As in S-E-X-X-Y, "She wants to be your man, she's got another plan";
- As in I Palindrome I's demo, "She, king of Brooklyn, she";
- As in Damn Good Times, "She acts like David Lee Roth when he turned 21".
I'm calling this approach "gender as social action" because of its unusual awareness of the sociological theory of "doing gender". The expectation that a man proves his sex category by doing "things that men do" requires an odd paradox: admitting that men are capable of doing all sorts of things which don't count as "things men do"!
In other words, gender labels in these songs may describe a character's chosen goals, social scene, or self-image, without necessarily prescribing a sex-determined nature. Awareness of gender flexibility can be a source of anxiety (fear of losing an assigned gender title, of doing it "wrong") or pride (in choosing a new, fun gender title, in doing it "right"). Seeing gender as a job title turns out to be a lot of work!
How Can I Sing Like A Girl is probably John Flansburgh's most immediately identifiable song "about gender", and it is, appropriately, about performance anxiety. This one is a particularly good example because it demonstrates these gender philosophies outside the world of romance.
An action can be done "like a girl" even if that isn't the sex or gender category of the actor. This isn't a symmetrical equation: the song hangs on the stigma unique to the phrase "like a girl" (compared to "like a boy" or even "like a lady"), and its meaning would be lost if we didn't see the singer as a man.
The question "how can I?" isn't really asking if it's possible to perform against type. Instead, it's asking for advice on learning and improving the skill... and avoiding the negative social consequences of picking a gender-mismatched goal. Ultimately, the narrator's goal is to find community with those who share this gender-goal, and "never be alone": a social solution to a social problem.
These songs are an odd pair to compare—one from a 2000s kids' educational album, the other from a 90s solo album. But both are structured around listing pairs of things, and they provide particularly clear illustrations of the "neutral binary category" versus "meaningful interactive role" approaches to gender.
from Even NumbersSkip the first number and the second one's even
Skip the third and the next one's even as well
Skip the next, take the next, skip the next
Take, skip, take
You like French fries
But you don't like French fries
You've got socks on
But you don't have socks on
You're a girl, but you're a boy
Girl, boy, girl
Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, red, green
Red, green, red, green, red
She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me
She loves me not, she
Even Numbers includes "girl/boy" among its examples of balanced opposites: even/odd, red/green, take/skip, yes/no.
"You're a girl but you're a boy" expects this equal-oppositeness to be so obvious that the listener understands it's flipping between addressing two different people as "you". But that wouldn't be a given from a more fluid-gender perspective!
Gender isn't entirely irrelevant to this song about basic math: the "she" in "she loves me not" is presumably picked because we know that the singer is a "he". But it's still only the symmetry of the pair that matters. It's easy to imagine this song sung by a "she" with the lyric flipped to "he loves me not" with no sense of gender-subversion or shift in meaning.
from Mr. Hughes SaysTell your sister and your brother
Tell the alien and the chimp
Tell the corpse and tell the killer
Tell the pilot and the blimp
Tell the wind and tell the phone
Tell the birds and tell the fly
Tell the streetlights and the car
Tell the stars and tell the sky
Mr. Hughes says, "Live and learn.
Dig and be dug in return."
Tell the boxer and the fist
Tell the logo and the lid
Tell the ladies and the lords
Tell the goats and tell the kid
Tell the stylus and the disc
Tell the dust and tell the breeze
Tell the needles and the wool
Tell the locks and tell the keys
Mr. Hughes Says includes "ladies/lords" and "brother/sister" among its examples of pairs which act on each other, often requiring the other to serve their purpose: pilot/blimp, streetlights/car, boxer/fist, stylus/disc, needles/wool, locks/keys.
It would be strange to describe most of these pairs as "equal" or "opposite". Goat/kid (and possibly alien/chimp, by the logic of 2001: A Space Odyssey) represent two stages of the same thing, and a killer can easily become the next corpse.
The chorus of "Dig and be dug in return" again emphasizes that these pairs are in active, reciprocal relationships, romantic or otherwise.
The words "girl" and "boy" have many other nuanced usages than just "female child" or "male child". In popular music, they're often a flirty, casual way to address a peer or a potential romantic partner. TMBG uses those words too frequently to be worth listing out; for the most part, context clues make it clear which meaning is intended.
from Don't Let's StartDon't, don't, don't let's start
This is the worst part
Could believe for all the world
That you're my precious little girl
But don't, don't, don't let's start
I've got a weak heart
And I don't get around how you get around
Which meaning is intended in the song Don't Let's Start? Is the narrator speaking to a lover or a teenage daughter? Its TMBW interps record years of people arguing one way or the other, and there is no "word of god" answer.
A romantic reading would be unusually gender-asymmetrical for Linnell's writing (think how you might interpret a line about "my precious little boy" in a song sung by a woman). Not only is this ambiguous, it's not clear if it's meant to be ambiguous.
from Toddler HiwayIn the mornin' sun 'round seven o'clock
The parking lot fills around Toys-Я-Us
And my little girl, she will get away
Ride her bike down
Toddler Hiway
Take your Close'n'Play
In Toddler Hiway, framed by Toys R Us and a children's record player, listeners tend to instantly agree: this "little girl" is a child.
But both "my little girl" and "ride her bike" are phrases with well-established adult rock-lingo meanings, particularly when combined with the image of riding down a highway with a portable music player. In a 1994 newspaper Flansburgh says this song began as a "Bruce Springsteen imitation"; the exact phrase "my little girl" appears in Jersey Girl and Cadillac Ranch, both in a romantic sense.
Flansburgh's more careful attention to gender-wording implications suggests that the potential ambiguity of the phrase may be part of the pastiche, an intentional joke. Perhaps she is playing pretend as one of these more rockin' characters.
Consider another difference between Even Numbers and Mr. Hughes: the all-encompassing "boy vs girl", versus the more specific social-relationship titles of "brother vs sister" and "ladies vs lords".
In 2015, on the show Disgressive Obscenity with Paul Guyet, John Linnell said:
"With Underwater Woman... it seemed like this potentially kind of objectifying song, like it could be read the wrong way. What I wanted to do was write a song about loneliness; it happens that the character's a woman. I'm trying to be sensitive, basically.
This is something I discussed with Flansburgh. I was like, 'how do I make this-'' And one of the things he was just politely saying, there was a line that I think originally went "underwater girl, underwater lady" or something, and he was like, 'Well if you change it to woman, that's already a step in the right direction.'"
This quote backs up the earlier idea that, in Linnell's character writing, a character's gender is supposed to be incidental to who they are. But it also raises another interesting point.
From the linguistic-sex point of view, "woman", "lady", and "girl" all work to tell us that someone is in the female category and will be referred to with feminine pronouns. At worst, using an inexact word might make a character's age a bit unclear:
- As in the extended lyrics for Nevada, which switch between "girl", "gal", "lady", and "dame";
- As in The End Of The Tour, the presumably college-aged "girl with a crown and a scepter who's on WLSD";
- As in Mr. Me, a deeply world-weary "boy" also given the mature, respectful title of "Mister";
- As in They'll Need A Crane, where "lad" and "gal" are disillusioned working adults;
- As in the Hotel Detective commentary, where Foley professional "Anne Hathaway" asserts herself with "I am a girl. I'm a girl."
But traditionally, a person's pronouns and sex category are not expected to change over their lifetime, let alone the course of a song. Why not take a bit of poetic license and treat these words as synonyms?
As Flansburgh points out, to some people, the difference between being called a "girl", a "woman", or a "lady" matters a lot. From the social-action perspective, where a gender title is earned by behavior, an unexpectedly lower-status title may imply personal failure or lack of respect:
- As in Half A Boy, where the narrator complains "you never took me serious" as he is referred to as a "boy" (only half of one, even) for lying and breaking promises in a relationship;
- As in Number Three, where the "rich/poor man" are the speaker's peers, the President speaks down to him by calling him "boy", and he "politely" calls women "ladies" when requesting their respect in return;
- As in Too Tall Girl's lyric sheet, which divides the parts between a "boy", the girl's peer, and "men", the wiser voices which give the boy instructions.
In this sense, the idea of playing at or aspiring to a "better" gender title doesn't have to come from a sexually subversive place at all. Girls and boys are already encouraged to practice for future roles as women and men (or as mothers and fathers, ladies and gentlemen).
But in a cross-sex sense, women being mannish are presented as self-explanatory and triumphant, while a man wanting to be girlish takes a defensive tone. In terms of social power, one is an upgrade, while the other is a downgrade.
In episode 71 of the Don't Let's Start fan podcast, hosts Jordan and Dave discuss the origins of the song How Can I Sing Like A Girl. As A Guided Tour Of Factory Showroom says:
This song is as much about freedom of expression as it is about how to sing high. Its title was inspired by part of TMBG's live show where Flansburgh had to sing in a falsetto to reproduce the sound of a sped-up vocal from a recording called "She Was a Hotel Detective". And so the idea of having "the right to sing like a girl on demand" was born.
But, Jordan points out:
Jordan: That's really supposed to be like the Bee Gees, who are men. It's not that this is the 'girl' part, that's the disco part. It's a style, and falsetto is not necessarily 'female'... That's my critique of his reasoning. I don't personally equate falsetto to 'singing like a girl'. Morrissey sings falsetto, almost every band I listen to has done it. [...]
Dave: They both do have higher voices. They're not Johnny Cash.
Jordan: It's more of a nerdy thing than a feminine thing.
It is true that there are many ways to be masculine, both biologically (how deep someone's voice becomes at puberty) or behaviorally (what vocal register someone trains themselves to sing or speak in). Some places, times, or subcultures have gender rules which are less aggressive or restrictive than others.
Jordan finds he doesn't particularly enjoy or relate to this song's lyrics, though he seems to struggle to pin down why, as (in his mind) part of the target audience himself:
Jordan: That's something I don't really like about this song, that's it's just kind of defeatist. I guess I just don't like songs about, 'everyone's against me and I'm failing'. I've got to think about this more. It's so sensitive. [...]
Dave: (Jokingly) That's because you've never been a victim. Check your privilege.
Jordan: No, I was certainly bullied as being 'you're like a girl'. I was scrawny, I was short for my age, I have a nasal voice, I hated sports, I had little weenie string bean arms... So I'm definitely the audience for a song like this, but it's not exactly something that interests me. That's not a personal thing I'm trying to get out of songs, some sort of political affirmation, like 'you're okay'.
I'd like to go over a few of the same quotes about the song as the podcast does, and point out some angles that Jordan and Dave may have missed.
The hosts read out a Flansburgh quote on the song's origin posted to TMBGareOK in 2021, which elaborates:
"Expressions like “throw like a girl” were typical in hazing when I was a kid in the suburbs of Boston when I also had long hair (which wasn’t appreciated by everybody). There was a kinda crude garage rock song by a long-haired Boston band named the Barbarians called Are You A Boy or Are You A Girl? that protested their harassment, and while it’s really a dumb song it was such a piece of my childhood, I think about it all the time."
From Are You A Boy or Are You A Girl:Are you a boy? Or are you a girl?
With your long blond hair you look like a girl
Yeah, you look like a girl
You may be a boy, hey, you look like a girl
Whoever is asking the titular question isn't actually confused: they believe they are talking to a boy. They want that boy to feel insulted at the comparison to a girl, to become defensive.
"Everyone wants to pick on someone so that the magnifying glass is off of them," Dave says about bullying. "It's all avoidance." It can be tempting for a target to deny girliness with insults, jokes, and stereotypes about proper gendered behavior, even if the claim is that girls are too nice, pretty, clean, gentle, etc to ever be understood or related to.
Flansburgh seems to be aware of this type of social trap, where rushing to distance yourself from the target can reinforce the insult-er's biases. As he said in a 2001 interview, on the topic of his name being maliciously mistaken for Jewish:
"It's very interesting experiencing prejudice second-hand. It's a good life lesson. Because how you deal with it is a real character test. Declaring yourself not [in the category being insulted] is not the point."
Other than reinforcing misogyny, "what are you, a girl?" is also a threat about what might happen if a boy doesn't fend off the "confusion" by trying to follow gender rules more closely: assumptions about sexuality, being left out of male friend groups, sticking out as a target for bullying.
The target could also try to reassure the insult-er that they're already following some set of heterosexual male rules. (Boys from Liverpool have long hair! The founding fathers had long hair! Disco singers and nerds have high voices!) It can feel safer to challenge mainstream gender norms from behind the protective shield of another group's gender norms.
There is just one always-wrong answer to this type of challenge: "Actually, I like being girly. It's not a bad thing."
One of the coolest clips brought up by the Don't Let's Start podcast is a bootleg of the 1996-03-28b live show where the phrase "sing like a girl" was first associated with Hotel Detective. They play the clip and discuss what we heard:
Flans: [Exaggerated low voice] Thank you. That was Hotel Detective.
Jordan: He lowers his voice... Basically what happened [after] is someone yells out... says something about him singing like a girl in the audience. Flansburgh went "Oh, thank you, thank you..." He seemed embarrassed, a little. Everyone's laughing. And then Linnell said "It takes a man to sing like a girl."
Consider these responses in the context of our discussion. A "thank you" refuses to deny the comparison or take it as insulting. The quip that follows defends against the "confusion" in a way Flansburgh's response did not, and as playful as it is, its reassurance relies on an appeal to gender stereotypes: "It takes a [brave person] to [do something fragile and embarrassing]".
Jordan suggests that the unsettling-ness of this gender-bending accusation sparked the song:
Jordan: I think it's like a rare case of an audience comment getting to him. Maybe it was in an intellectualized way, not saying his feelings were hurt. But maybe he was like, 'Oh, it's something to think about. What does that mean, that I just sang like a girl. What's a girl's voice, what's a guy's voice.'
But while this moment definitely inspired the song (down to the exact, intentionally demeaning-sounding phrasing), more recently unearthed reviews of earlier shows suggest that gender-bending was already on Flansburgh's mind, in a more playful way:
Show recap 1996-03-21b:The general running theme of all the shows at the Mercury Lounge has been disco. Flansburgh joked that his vocal part in the Back to Skull version of Hotel Detective was actually just a woman (or a tape of a woman) singing behind the curtain.
Show recap 1996-03-28a:Someone wanted Flansburgh to "sing like a woman" or something like that (I only caught half of what went on there...) and he did the Carole King songs very realistically, complete with hand motions!
The disco falsetto of Hotel Detective can be "defended" against effeminacy by mentioning the heterosexual men who sang in that style, but that game can also be played the other way. Take legendary disco singer Sylvester, whose falsetto was inspired by his admiration for women and drag performers, and who was dubbed "The Queen of Disco" for his vocal performance (how's that for an earned cross-gender title?) The key isn't just audience reception, but also social context and intent.
In another clip used in the podcast, Linnell suggests that Flansburgh aspires to sound like female vocalists when he sings high:
"As far as Sing Like A Girl, I can tell you it's definitely more along the lines of... there's a notion that women are better singers than men, and... the much more simple and direct idea of I want to be able to sing... as well as a girl. Again, I'm speaking for John, but I think that's kind of where it's coming from."
When Jordan describes why he believes he is the target audience for this song, he describes experiencing stigma for traits (short, not muscular, nasal voice, disinterest in sports) that he seems to have re-absorbed into a nerd-masculine self image. This is the "freak flag" that makes him feel at home. But self-described "nerd" fans of TMBG may notice that the Johns become defensive around that term, finding it reductive and embarrassing. Fine for other people; not how they see themselves.
Jordan may mistake the song's thesis statement for self-deprecation at first glance because femininity has been projected onto him, but isn't something he's tried to pursue as a personal goal: he's only ever encountered it in a defensive way. I imagine that it would be similarly difficult for Flansburgh to understand how many people experience the song White And Nerdy not as 'everyone is against me', but as fun and aspirational!
As Jordan realizes, somewhere around the second, screamin' guitar solo:
Jordan: It's really like a statement of purpose kind of thing.
Dave: I WILL let my freak flag fly.
Jordan: It goes against what I said, I said maybe I don't like the song because it's a little defeatist, but that's the opposite of defeatist. It's like, no, here it is!
While HCISLaG is an anxious song, it seems to be less "what if I'm called 'girly' for having a high voice?", and more "what if I want to sing high and fall short?" (This would fit with a quote that Jordan and Dave find odd, saying the song is about when throat-coat tea doesn't work.)
Or, worse, "If I admit to liking something not in spite of being feminine but because it's feminine, what else might people call me?" As Jordan observes, the same crowd who will cheer for "freedom of self-expression in a world that sucks" will laugh at a man saying the title "How Can I Sing Like A Girl".
Two years after the writing of this song, the Johns appeared on a spectacularly uncomfortable episode of the call-in advice show "Loveline". When hosts Dr. Drew and Carrolla claim that "a little girl voice" is a sign of emotional issues in women, Flansburgh pushes back a bit. Some women have high voices because they're physically small; and his wife thinks of the "baby girl voice" as a learned affectation to appeal to men, "a head-trippin' welcome to my spider web thing".
Which leads to the memorable exchange:
Carrolla: Here's the point. You can read voices, just like some people can analyze handwriting. Drew and I, from listening to thousands of people a year, guys and girls, can tell where they're coming from, from the tone and the cadence and that kind of thing.
Flans: So if a guy calls up with a little girl's voice- [Carolla laughs] what can you tell about them.
Carrolla: It's means he's, uh... a pedophile.
It doesn't seem to occur to anyone else (as it might to us, in the context of this conversation) that this could have been a self-description. Maybe some of the men in the room have higher voices, but surely they don't see themselves as girly. Carrolla simply takes the combination of traits as a derogatory joke and supplies the derogatory punchline. Whether or not the question was meant that way before anyone laughed, it quickly turns into one as everyone quickly agrees and laughs along, distancing-ly. Nobody wants to be the man left standing too close to the freak barrier.
It's a lot easier to stick up for other people's dignity when you're not busy worrying about whether or not you're on the "correct" side of an imaginary dividing line. Not to mention that whoever you're sticking up for will notice if you're doing it from a potentially condescending (and objectively incorrect) position of "not that any of this applies to me!"
Jordan: [My wife] Kristen really doesn't like, as a woman, media that pities women, like "You're all victims and you need help". She really doesn't like the lyric "how can I sing like a girl and not be objectified as if I were a girl." She doesn't like being seen as someone who needs help, or as a pity party sort of thing.
In a song that otherwise sticks to the broad message "doing this girly thing is challenging, but desirable, and an insult to one of us is an insult to all of us", this one line does seem to step on its own toes with a defensive separation: "this bad thing happens to women, but I'm not one, so it shouldn't happen to me". I would agree with Kristen, from this perspective, that that is the weakest lyric of the song.