They Might Be Giants, but they for sure get along – The Oakland Press

John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been making albums together as They Might Be Giants for 40 years.

And one thing has kept them together during that time.

“John and I get along fine,” explains Linnell, 66, who met Flansburgh when they were teenagers growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and started writing songs together in high school. They went to different colleges, but wound up moving to Brooklyn at the same time, where they formed TMBG in 1982 and released the group’s self-titled first album in 1986.

“We still have a good creative partnership, and we like playing together,” Linnell adds. “We’ve both done solo work, and we see this great benefit in working with each other because I think (TMBG) has been, and is, greater than the sum of its parts.”

The feeling, he adds, extends to the other musicians he and Flansburgh began adding after about a decade of working as a duo. “They will tell you that we all are still getting along famously. We haven’t gotten sick of each other.

“I don’t have anything to compare it to, really,” Linnell notes. “I haven’t really been in a band where everybody is throwing things and falling out and quitting the band. That hasn’t been my experience. I guess maybe we’re lucky.”

During their time as TMBG, Linnell and Flansburgh, 65, have released two dozen studio albums — including this month’s “The World is to Dig” — a series of EPs and five children’s albums. They’ve had occasional radio play and hits — including “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Ana Ng” and “Snail Shell” — and won two Grammy Awards, one for “Boss of Me,” the theme song for TV’s “Malcolm in the Middle.” They also contributed to the soundtrack for the Broadway musical adaptation of “SpongeBob Square Pants,” which won an Outer Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a Tony.

Technological changes have, of course, changed the way the two work together. But what’s remained consistent is a desire to surprise and keep each other engaged.

“It still happens, yeah,” Lindell says. “Part of the motivating thing for us when we’re working is, ‘What’s the other guy gonna think?’ We still have each other in mind as the primary editor of each other’s work, so I think that we know we can’t trot out the same old ideas over and over again. There’s this impulse of, ‘Will this be something he won’t be expecting …?’”

“The World is to Dig,” which was preceded by the EP “Eyeball” in January, is TMG’s first album in five years and was delayed by a variety of factors, including an automobile accident for Flansburgh and Linnell’s continuing lung issues (he was diagnosed with COPD in 2025), which forced TMBG to postpone some shows last year. But the time benefited the album, Linnell says, including a late decision to include a cover of the Raspberries’ 1974 single “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” a song he liked as a teenager.

“I think John and I kinda felt it was funny,” Linnell explains. “We’re both in our mid-60s, so the notion of having an overnight sensation is deeply wrong, obviously.” The album’s other 17 tracks, meanwhile, are standard-issue TMBG — compact (only two songs are longer than three minutes) and quick-witted, whether it’s a power pop tune called “Wu-Tang” (and, yes, inspired by the clan) and a very personal track that’s sung in French.

“Mostly we don’t have any overarching ideas as far as putting together an album, or a tour,” Linnell explains. “It’s pretty much just a record of where we’re at, creatively. We don’t really do concept albums. … We did when we were making kids’ records, but these adult They Might Be Giants albums are more or less a collection of what we’ve been up to, creatively, at that time.”

TMBG is continuing to perform multiple nights in each city, allowing it to focus on specific albums. This year, Linnell says, it’s drawing from 1988’s “Lincoln” and 1994’s “John Henry,” as well as the new material. The group’s next album is not on the runway yet, but Linnell — an avid biker who’s also “continuing to try and pointlessly learn foreign languages in a chaotic and random way — has no doubt more is coming.

“A lot of the sort of oddball projects come from somebody else,” Linnell says. “They’ll say, ‘Would you guys like to do … ?’ Often they’ll be one-offs. That’s something we’ll probably continue to do as long as somebody’s interested in asking us … and then I imagine we’ll start working towards something (for TMBG) before too long.”

They Might Be Giants performs Tuesday and Wednesday, April 28-29, at the Majestic Theatre, 4140 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Doors at 8 p.m. 313-833-9700 or majesticdetroit.com.