Children's Music and Video Review – “Here Comes the 1-2-3s” by They Might Be Giants

by Daniel Sean Kaye

123s.jpg class=righthand width=250 height=250 When I was in college, a friend turned me on to They Might Be Giants, an indie rock band of two guys named John who did music in a variety of genres. It was uplifting and weird stuff, and we laughed and sang along to it.

Then I got older and forgot about They Might Be Giants (TMBG), until I started to notice songs in “Higgleytown Heroes” and “The New Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” sounded very familiar. It turned out the boys of TMBG had grown up too and had turned their attention to kids’ music.

A few years ago they released
Here Come the ABCs, a bunch of songs and videos based on the alphabet. Now they’ve come out with the follow-up,
Here Come the 123s, all about numbers. And since the preview copy floated across my desk, all we’ve been watching and singing along to are tunes about “Zeroes,” “Seven,” “One Dozen Monkeys,” an “813-mile Car Trip,” and many more.

The songs range from blues to rock, ballads to polkas, and are all made even more interesting by a diverse collection of animation and live-action style videos. Some are laugh-out-loud funny while others are just amazingly inventive. None of the lyrics seem toss away or too juvenile and the rhymes are brainy, using some big words.

Whether you were a fan of TMBG or not, I would bet your kids will like more than one of these smart, jammin’ tunes which are a far, far, far cry from much that passes for kids’ music. Plus, I think the song “Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go To Work)” was written for every adult I know.

February 11, 2008

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