Now, I know that last month I promised that I would be prepping up a blog post for laypeople to navigate Sonic 3 AIR’s numerous settings without freaking out. I still intend to do that (and a recent AIR update release was probably worth waiting for first) but the main reason I’ve been delayed is quite simple: I’ve been using some of my own experience modding it to backport some changes into Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles. That’s right, your boy is doing M68K assembly coding. Don’t everyone clap at once.

Doing that’s been taking up enough of my free time, to the point that I got jumpscared by the release of They Might Be Giants’ new album, The World is To Dig. Mortals will have about another week to receive the album but I have been graced with an early copy of the song! No, I can’t post the whole thing. But I can post the lyrics!

Don’t act surprised. This is a mailing list called mail-a-song. This was always eventually going to end up a bastion of TMBGposting.

And while I figured from the title that I was going to like it, it really should go up there in the pantheon of Linnel’s songs. We get all the great things, some odd wordplay, internal rhymes, a reasonably coherent look at history, and, yes, the classic Linellian unreliable narrator and car wreck imagery combo. I like to imagine this is the same character as in I’m Your Boyfriend Now.

I had initially attempted to post them on the comprehensive TMBG fansite This Might Be a Wiki, but they proved to be too controversial. Now, this song is not part of the tracks previewed in a recent interview with EarWax podcast so I understand their hestitation. But I can guarantee you that these lyrics are 100% legit, completely genuine, with no embellishment or exaggeration on my part. After all, what kind of abject fuckin’ weirdo would create fake lyrics to an anticipated song and put them on the internet? After hyping them up as if they were from one of his favorite songwriters? And for what benefit, bare internet clout? I assure you that what I am posting is perhaps the single most genuine lyric leak that has ever been seen by anyone on the planet earth. And so, without further ado:

NEW WAVE WILL NEVER DIE

Today I rose up from my bed
And there I saw a horse’s head
Sent to me by a big-shot record exec
Some might think it was a threat
Because I’d put them into debt
Like my last song made their finances a wreck
But I thought it did not need to neigh
For me to hear it seem to say that
Unlike me I know new wave will never die

[Chorus]
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
Some genres might retire to that great record crate in the sky
But I know no way will new wave ever die

The brash and glam will feel alive
From the energy of a beat that drives
But never makes an unsignalled left turn
Pedestrian, some might call it
But the crosswalk’s not where it’s a hit
Living a grisly scene to make your stomach churn
We’ll all succumb to this music’s power
Knowing it will have no final hour
And unlike my car new wave will never die

[Chorus]
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
Some genres might retire to that great record crate in the sky
But I know no way will new wave ever die

When one day my own body’s buried, lying stiff and cold
I know that there’s one style that the critics can’t call “old”
There’s no reason anyone should seek the lost fountain of youth
When there’s farfisa organs, tom-toms, four chords and the truth

[Chorus]
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
Some genres might retire to that great record crate in the sky
But I know no way will new wave ever die

Is it ska or power-pop
All I know is it won’t stop
There’s no day we’ll see this music say goodbye
You can listen to the Bangles
Or to some guitar that jangles
And I know no way will new wave ever die

[Chorus]
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
New wave will never die (new wave will never die)
Some genres might retire to that great record crate in the sky
But I know no way will new wave ever die