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 beleive they are really about sex or gender.
A few sections on this page raise questions that I'm still not sure how to answer, and may return to later. These potentially underbaked sections will be marked with a dagger (†).
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.
There's one more notable difference between Even Numbers and Mr. Hughes: in Even Numbers, the binary is a simple "boy/girl", while Mr. Hughes uses the very specific titles "brother/sister" and "ladies/lords".
It would be easy to assume that this is because one is written for children and the other for an adult audience, but there seems to be more to it than that.
John Linnell on Disgressive Obscenity with Paul Guyet, in 2015:
"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 an interesting point. From the linguistic-sex point of view, "woman", "lady", and "girl" all describe someone in the female category who will be referred to with she/her 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 college-aged (or older) "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 exact wording matters quite a lot.
From the social-action perspective, the behavior expected from a "boy", a "man", and a "gentleman" can be just as different as the behavior expected from a "boy" and a "girl". (Recall that Mr. Hughes lists "goat/kid" as one of its pairs, and consider the difference between a "boys' club" and a "gentleman's club".)
If titles can be earned (or lost) based on behavior, then using a lower-status title may feel like an accusation of 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" (half of one, at that) for lying and breaking promises in a relationship;
- And 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;
- And as in Too Tall Girl's lyric sheet, which divides the parts between a "boy", the girl's peer, and "men", the voices which give the boy instructions.
(Hence the advice to put the Underwater Woman on equal footing to, say, Particle Man.)
In this sense, aspiring to a new gender title isn't necessarily subversive or trans-sexual at all. Traditionally, boys are encouraged to play-practice their future roles as men and fathers, and girls are encouraged to play-practice their future roles as women and mothers.
Still, this may explain how lyrics about women wanting to be "man"-ish are presented as self-explanatory and triumphant, while the song about a man wanting to be "girl"-ish takes a defensive and defiant tone. In terms of social prestige, one is an upgrade, while the other is a downgrade. (People who use phrases like "throw like a girl" certainly mean it disrespectfully!)
The words "girl" and "boy" have many other nuanced meanings than "child". In popular music, it's often a flirty, casual form of address for a peer or a potential romantic partner. TMBG uses these words in that sense 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 Start†Don'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 page records years of disagreement, and there is no "word of god" answer.
A romantic reading would be unusually gender-asymmetrical for Linnell's writing (imagine 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, or simply an artefact of Linnell's writing style.
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 cool, 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 these phrases may be an intentional joke, part of the pastiche. Perhaps she is playing pretend as one of these more rockin' characters.