Nightmare Fuel / They Might Be Giants

• Dial-A-Song was a trove of recordings, some easily on par with their final work. But some of their sketches and early recordings could be outright terrifying:
  • The Dial-A-Song version of "Four Of Two", which ends with a fairly graphic description of the narrator strangling himself to death with his own bare hands. In context, it's Black Comedy, but it's still a bit creepy, more so if you're used to the Lighter and Softer ending of the No! version.
  • The Dial-A-Song version of "Token Back To Brooklyn," which starts off with pitched-down voices repeating "get away," then kicks into a minor-key, downtempo rhythm. To say nothing of one of the original lines:
    The fare collector's drinking lighter fluid and claims he's killed our parents
  • The very early, service-exclusive "Hi Honey I'm Home". Don't let the innocent-sounding title fool you. The song consists of Flansburgh depressingly singing "Hi, honey, I'm home" backed to a droning two-note synth loop that sounds exactly like a European-style emergency siren and the sound of a car crashing. Hell Is That Noise indeed.
  • From the 2018 incarnation: "Door To Door Minotaur,"^note Later released in More Murdered Remains, a bonus disc of My Murdered Remains. dedicated to the memory of then-recently deceased Residents member Hardy Fox. While the reason for the tribute arguably falls under an entirely different trope, the song itself is, in true Residents fashion, deeply surreal and downright nightmarish.
• Linnell stated The Residents was a huge influence on the band, and cites TMBG's early work as evidence. Listening to their first album, it isn't hard to tell:
  • "Hide Away Folk Family", especially the coda, which culminates in something not unlike Courage suffering from catatonic shock.
  • "Rabid Child" is quite haunting. It starts off with a distorted and warbling voice that says "Lord, please don't take me away..." It also has a music video, which except for one clip, has NEVER been released to the public. Said clip has dark and ominous lighting and a disjointed vibe. The mystery surrounding the video certainly doesn't help with the creepy factor either.
  • Though not on the first album (or any album from that matter), "Indian Ocean" recorded in their early days is cited as being one of the strongest evidences of their Residents influence, and it's hard not to see why. The whole song is oddly dissonant with a droning organ, a percussion track consisting of a bicycle wheel and playing cards, the Johns singing into an electric fan, and this odd distorted noise (possibly from an electric guitar) repeating throughout.
  THIS IS OUR DESCRIPTION, OF THE INDIAN OCEAN.
• "I'll Sink Manhattan," a harrowing, emotional ode to hitting the Despair Event Horizon, backed by an instrumental that veers full-tilt between the ominous and the operatic.
  • It's actually worse than that: according to the Johns, the song is about getting revenge on your ex by literally sinking their home of Manhattan, killing everyone present. To quote John Linnell:
  A song about a guy who somehow figures out how to sink the island of Manhattan just to kill his ex-lover, so it's his apology to the other people he's gonna kill in between. He's just gotta do it!
• "The Statue Got Me High": It's about a statue that just makes people burst into flames and die. The song mentions it's being displayed publicly.
  And now it is your turn!
  (Your turn to hear the stone, and then your turn to burn!)
• "Stomp Box" is a fairly dark song, from lyrics like "Little stomp box tear it from my heart" to John screaming "KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL ME NOW..."
• The cold, synth-y "Am I Awake." It's about someone who's so trapped in the monotony of their daily routine that they've lost all sense of time, to the point that they can't even tell if they're awake!
  And when I close my eyes, it looks the same as when I open them again
• The slide whistles at the end of "Employee of the Month" give the song an ominous air.
• "Cloisonné". The narrator of the song's obviously up to some unsettling activity. "You've got a friend in law enforcement, don't go calling law enforcement..."
• From their 2013 album Nanobots:
  • "Replicant" is a slow jazzy song with a creepy keyboard part, and even creepier implications that only get worse as the song progresses
    Replicant why do you lie on the ground,
    Shoveling handfuls of dirt on yourself?
    ...
    Replicant, someone is waiting outside
    He says you did something wrong to his friend
    Look at me when I'm talking to you
    What have you got there behind your back?
    I found this when I was cleaning your room
    I think you've got some explaining to do
    Whatever you did, we'll get through this
    Go out the back and I'll deal with the cops
  • "The Darlings of Lumberland". If the demented woodwind section doesn't at least disturb you, John Flansburgh's demonic altered voice certainly will. The lyrics also mention "empty, hollow sockets."
  • The brief track "Sleep" concerns a person who believes that when he goes to sleep, a doppelganger impersonates him.
• Even Glean gets in on this:
  • "Aaa," off "Glean" speeds through lines concerning everything from tinfoil-hat conspiracies and impending misfortune to distrust of surroundings and grievous bodily harm.
    What's this button do? I wonder what's inside this ticking
    Package that's addressed to me, and how are sausages made
    And what am I made of? I'm gonna find out now
  • The part of "Unpronounceable" where the song sounds like it's cutting out can be considered quite the nauseous Sensory Abuse to some.
• The title track to I Like Fun, in which the narrator describes himself going off his meds as a form of escapism. The music video is full of disturbing imagery, including fire, blood, and flesh melting off skulls.
  • "Mrs. Bluebeard" is far more mundane in its horror than many of the examples on this page, but the story behind it — that of a woman murdered by her abusive husband — is still deeply chilling.
• "If Day for Winnipeg" describes the namesake simulated Nazi raid escalating beyond any hope of control, but what really sells it is the eerie, polytonal backbeat complete with creaking brass.
• "The Vowel Family" from Here Come the ABCs can qualify as this. The dissonant main refrain, in combination with the titular Vowel Family's pitched up voices, can definitely make kids scared. The music video only amplifies this; the puppets used for the family members are merely two tubes that can be pulled apart to represent talking, and their eyes are merely silver buttons, resulting in their faces having zero emotion. It does not help that they are prominently featured throughout the video, and often come quite close to the camera. At the end of the video, the tubes for the puppets are pulled away from each other offscreen, giving the appearance of them dying while a more somber version of the refrain plays, crossing somewhat into Tear Jerker territory as well.

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