Lyric discussion by SuddenlySeymour 

Cover art for The Mesopotamians lyrics by They Might Be Giants

"Hey, man, I thought that you were dead I thought you crashed your car" "No, man, I've been right here this whole time playing bass guitar For the Mesopotamians"

Sounds to me like a pretty obvious shout-out to Paul McCartney, going so far as to mention the supposed method of how he died. Why that's there, though, I have no idea. Great song, though.

Neither Paul McCartney nor any of the rest of Beatles died of a car crash, right?

Sorry, just saw TMBG in Fairfield, CT, and I'm overanalyzing everything

none of them did, no.. but I remember when I was little, my dad told me about all these silly jokes/rumors about how the Beatles messed with people and said "Paul's dead" or something like that REALLY quietly in the back of a record.. i dont really remember..

BUT yeah, this song could be using the Mesopotamians as a joke.. refering to them as cornerstones in human civilization, like the Beatles were corner stones in the rock n roll genre.. and the song has a HUGE retro (Beatles-ish) feel for some reason.. might be a happy accident...

Right. The Mesopotamians are explicitly identified with the Beatles. So there might be an implied commentary on the laughable antiquity of music from that era, in comparison with the light-as-air, smart, untroubled, post-modern music of groups like TMBG. The David Cowles cartoon version on YouTube certainly plays up the idea of a kind of absurdly outmoded, disintegrating, irrelevant past. This is a really great song.