Written for the volume 90s Alternative and Philosophy: Thinking Outside the Heart-Shaped Box, Joshua Heter and Richard Greene eds. McFarland & Co.
For a certain kind of nerd, They Might Be Giants (TMBG) are the archetypal 90s alternative band. In the song "Birdhouse in Your Soul", from their 1990 album Flood, they sing: "My story's infinite, Like the Longines Symphonette, It doesn't rest." What is the Longines Symphonette? How much, if anything, does a listener need to know about it in order to fully understand or even properly appreciate the song? Using this case as an exemplar, the paper argues for interpretive particularism: The features of context which are relevant to understanding and appreciating a work are the ones which actually give us a deeper appreciation for it, but there is no general rule for which ones those will be. The paper concludes with a parallel lesson about listening to cover songs.
The first on-line draft of this paper was posted 8feb2025.