“Particle Man” by They Might Be Giants

"Particle Man" sits seventh on Flood, the 1990 third album from They Might Be Giants, and it became one of the duo's best-loved songs without ever being sold as a single. John Linnell wrote it alone, words and music, and the band produced it themselves, with Roger Moutenot recording and mixing.

It sounds like a nursery rhyme wandered into a physics lecture and refused to leave: a lopsided, bouncing tune, Alan Bezozi tapping out snare and tambourine, and a melody that owes a debt to the theme from the 1967 Spider-Man TV series. Weird, catchy and perfectly harmless, it has long been singled out as one of the most kid-friendly things in the band's catalog, a preview of the children's records they would start making more than a decade later with No!.

For the Flood promotional video, Linnell and John Flansburgh played it with a ticking metronome for company. The band's official YouTube account is even named ParticleMen in its honor.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.