Here Come the ABCs is the eleventh studio album by They Might Be Giants, released in February 2005.
Tracklist
Here Come the ABCs provides examples of:
- 555: During the third scene of "Can You Find It?" where you need to find the L, there's a sign on the station that would change the advertisements. One of them has a 555-find number.
- Always Someone Better: W in "D and W" is described as much better than D, due to to the fact he has more publicity and isn't prone to accidents.
- Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better: The music video "Letter Shapes" has to magicians trying to outmatch each other with their magic tricks.
- Anthropomorphic Food:
- There's a living apple in the Earth overhead shots and a living banana in the train station in "Can You Find It?".
- There's a living Apple in "Alphabet Lost and Found" that is missing an "A".
- Balloonacy: The ending of the second version of "LMNO" has kids holding balloons with letters on them. Some of them would float away.
- Bowdlerise: The album is already made for kids, but two of the music videos were altered for the Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior airings and the DVD/CD combo released through online retailers later in 2005.
- "Alphabet Lost and Found" would flash a solid color background when the song goes "Where they gonna go without their letters?". During that part, the background would rapidly flash every two seconds a solid color background that matches the missing letter (eg, "A" is blue, so a blue background would flash). This was altered on just the background being solid black with the letters being the only ones to change color to reduce seizures.
- "LMNO" originally ended with a kid spray painting graffiti on the wall. This was changed to kids holding balloons, possibly because Disney did not want to encourage vandalism with graffiti.
- Butt-Monkey: D in "D and W" suffers a lot of bad luck in the music video, such as crashing a ship against some rocks and not getting mail afterwards.
- Droste Image: The ending of "Pictures Of Pandas Painting" has a panda showing a painting of itself holding the painting, and the painting cycles over until the video ends.
- Epileptic Flashing Lights: The music video "Alphabet Lost and Found" uses a similar technique during the parts where the lyrics go "Where they gonna go without their letters?". During that part, the background would rapidly flash every second a solid color background that matches the missing letter (eg, "A" is blue, so a blue background would flash). When the album got released through a CD/DVD combo through Amazon later in 2005, they removed this to reduce seizures.
- Green Aesop: "C Is For Conifers" deals with the different conifers trees.
- Non-Human Head: Q and U from "Q U" are just the letters on human bodies.
- Picky Eater: Some of the letters in "E Eats Everything" are picky on what is served. A doesn't have a big appetite, B doesn't eat anything out of order. C only likes sweets that start with said letter, F only eats with fancy wine, G likes only gourmet dishes but can't decide what to eat, J only likes juice, K only drinks soda, and Z only eats Es.
- Power Outage Plot: The animated version of "ICU" has the male X watching TV until the power goes out, and misses seeing the weather woman.
- Sequel Episode: Some of the songs that are titled "Type B" are followup to previous songs in the album (I Am A Robot, Fake-Believe, and A to Z).
- The Shut-In: D in "D and W" is described as shy and doesn't get out of the house much anymore from his accidents. W asks him this and D says it's also because he got a new television set and watches sports.
- Sweet Tooth: Aside from E in "E Eats Everything", C only likes to eat sweets.
- Vague Age: D's age is very vague in terms of how old he is. The lyrics state he's getting older, but his voice makes it sound much younger.
- Vocal Evolution: The little girl in "I Am A Robot" had a much deeper voice, but once it gets to "I Am A Robot Type B", her voice became higher.
- Wine Is Classy: F in "E Eats Everything" only likes to eat if fancy wine is served with it.
