They Might Be Giants “Birdhouse in Your Soul” 1989. 12″ single, promotional copy. “Birdhouse in Your Soul” was TMBG’s lead single from their third album Flood and their first single on a major label (Elektra). With it, they scored their first hit, going to #6 in the UK and #3 on the US alternative chart. Like most of TMBG’s songs, it is weird, a little nerdy (there’s 18 key changes and a non-standard pop drumbeat) and absurd; the lyrics tell a story from the perspective of a nightlight shaped like a canary but ultimately the song makes little to no sense. Singer John Linnell has commented that the lyrics sound like stand-in words and that’s probably because the melody was written a few years before and Linnell “shoehorned” the lyrics in. This is a promo copy so it has “Birdhouse in Your Soul” on both sides of the record rather than the commercial single which had “Hot Cha” as the flip side.