Song · Neutral Milk Hotel
“Two-Headed Boy” by Neutral Milk Hotel
From the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)
“Two-Headed Boy” by Neutral Milk Hotel appears on 4 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 2007 and 2023. It was first released in 1998 on the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Its best result is #351 on the WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #2,213 indie & aaa song of all time.
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"Two-Headed Boy" belongs to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the second and last album Neutral Milk Hotel made, released on Merge in February 1998. Jeff Mangum wrote it, and Robert Schneider produced, as he did the whole record, cut at Pet Sounds Studio in the summer of 1997.
Schneider was out to beat the thin sound of On Avery Island, and instead of guitar pedals he got his fuzz from heavy compression, which gives the album its blown-out, lo-fi crackle. The record mixes indie rock with psychedelic folk, surreal lyrics and odd instruments like singing saw and uilleann pipes, with Anne Frank's diary as a key inspiration. Reviews were only moderately warm at first, but a cult grew around it, and critics now count it among the defining indie rock records.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 351 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2014 | 557 | WXPN | WXPN 885 All-Time Greatest Songs (2014) | 885 |
| 2019 | 463 | KEXP | KEXP Listeners' Favorite Songs of All Time | 627 |
| 2023 | 714 | The Current | The Current's 893 Essential Songs of the '90s | 893 |
Also listed as: Two Headed Boy.
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