Music / Long Tall Weekend

"You're older than you've ever been
And now you're even older..."

"She thinks she's Edith Head
Or Helen Gurley Brown
Or some other cultural figure
We don't know a lot about."

—"(She Thinks She's) Edith Head"

Long Tall Weekend is the seventh studio album by They Might Be Giants. It was the first full-length, online-only album ever released by a major artist, originally released on eMusic in July of 1999. It featured a number of songs played at live shows over the years, as well as several songs written during the John Henry and Factory Showroom periods (with several actually being Cut Songs from the Factory Showroom sessions). Some songs were re-recorded for Mink Car, while others were later included on the rarities album They Got Lost.

Tracklist:

1. Drinkin' (1:32)
2. (She Thinks She's) Edith Head (2:32)
3. Maybe I Know (2:04)
4. Rat Patrol (2:04)
5. Token Back to Brooklyn (1:01)
6. Older (1:56)
7. Operators Are Standing By (1:24)
8. Dark and Metric (1:40)
9. Reprehensible (3:17)
10. Certain People I Could Name (3:30)
11. Counterfeit Faker (2:12)
12. They Got Lost (4:38)
13. Lullabye to Nightmares (2:28)
14. On Earth My Nina (1:24)
15. The Edison Museum (1:59)

And Tropes Are Still Marching On:

• Alternate Album Cover: The album cover was changed for a more detailed redrawn version for the album's 2023 vinyl release. The walls are blue instead of orange, the face on the album cover is red instead of yellow, and the tickets are yellow instead of blue.
• Cover Version: "Maybe I Know", first recorded by Lesley Gore in 1964.
• Department of Redundancy Department: From "Older"
  Time is marching on
  And time... is still marching on
• Dressed to Oppress: One verse of "Certain People I Could Name" features a news report about a female "genocidal overlord" who wears epaulets.
• Epic Rocking: It may only clock in at a modest 4:38, but "They Got Lost" is the longest song the band has ever released on a studio album.
• Ignored Epiphany: The narrator of "Reprehensible" reflects on the awful things he's done in his life (and all the previous ones) every night as he tries to go to sleep, but forgets them every time he wakes up.
• In the Style of:
  • "Rat Patrol" sounds a bit like Guns N' Roses.
  • "Counterfeit Faker" is sort of faux-Bluegrass.
• Ludicrous Gibs: "Certain People I Could Name" opens with the narrator watching a samurai movie featuring the aftermath of a gruesome battle.
  The few surviving samurai survey the battlefield
  Count the arms, the legs and heads, and then divide by five
• Lyrical Dissonance: Even for a band who lives on this trope, "Reprehensible" is quite striking. A Villain Song about a villain who gets to keep doing horrible things for millennia via Reincarnation, set to a chipper retro-style tune that could fit unobtrusively into Broadway Melody of 1936.
• No Sense of Direction: "They Got Lost" is based on an incident where Linnell and Flansburgh were late to a radio show appearance because they got lost on their way to the station.
  John said to John
  "I think we make a left at the light
  There should be a big 'B'
  assuming this map is right"
  
  John looked over and he said
  "Hey, no it's not
  It's a crumpled up wrapper
  From the fast food that we got"
• Singer Namedrop: "They Got Lost" is about the band getting lost on their way to a radio interview, and drops in the band name and the names of the individual members.
• Word Salad Lyrics: "On Earth My Nina" was inspired by playing a recording of "Thunderbird" backwards, and writing lyrics based on what the gibberish sounded like, resulting in lyrics like "God forbid a vaguer feat / National hell mugged me". Oddly, it was released several years before "Thunderbird" itself was finished and released.