“I hope you die” is a line that Mountain Goats fans have been singing at the band’s shows for about 20 years. But suddenly, the song that contains it, “No Children,” has turned from a fans-only cult hit to a favorite among millions of new listeners. Or 15 seconds’ worth of it has, anyway, thanks to the tune taking off and becoming 2021’s unlikeliest TikTok sensation.
In most of the viral videos made with the song as soundtrack, users do a brief bit of choreography that illustrates the divorcing couple in the song drowning. Or, in many cases, they use their cats to simulate the narrator sinking into the ocean. Something about the sheer, extreme bitterness of the sentiments therein has grabbed younger generations who are clinging to its only partially tongue-in-cheek anger and despair as if it were their own.
Fortunately, despite the passage of time, the Mountain Goats are still around to enjoy the fruits of this wholly unsolicited virality. Frontman John Darnielle checked in with PvNew from a tour stop in Brooklyn to celebrate the song’s crossover to a weirdly embracing mass audience, even as he says that, at 54, he’s personally too long-in-the-tooth for TikTok. He also discussed the three (!) albums the band has released in the last year and a half.
PvNew: It’s fun in the music business when an older song breaks through via what seems to be a completely random set of circumstances, right?
Darnielle: That was the fun of it. Why is “No Children” just creeping up on this year? It was wild. It was always our No. 2 song. It’s one of my better songs. But the force of it moving up was really pretty fun to watch. As you might imagine, the past two weeks and the last couple of days especially, you have a lot of thoughts as you go, “Wow, 137,000 new people listened to ‘No Children’ today.”
It must be weird to think about millions of people suddenly hearing you… but only 15 seconds of you. And you didn’t get to choose which 15 seconds.
They’re hearing a brief portion of a song that already has a specific meaning in our catalog and to our fan base and among a lot of people. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and our existence suddenly is being gazed upon by a whole bunch of new people through this very narrow lens. But at the same time, you have to admit that they sort of get it. They latched onto a 15 seconds that’s a key moment in both the song and the catalog and sort of identified it as that. It tells you a lot about how good the critical eye of the public can be — that people are good at reading stuff, if get a chance to hear it.
“No Children” had just been sitting there since 2002. When I say it’s just been sitting there… it’s been one of our most popular songs in our catalog. But the Mountain Goats are, I always say, sort of a boutique concern. We’re not for everybody. My voice can be a deal breaker. We’re never reaching for the brass ring. We made literary rock. [Laughs.] But when people do find it, it affirms for those of us who make indie music that when the broader public is exposed to it, there’s more people who would like it if they get a chance to hear it. The consolidation of radio and the diffuse nature of the media landscape means that there’s lots of good stuff that people don’t generally hear unless it gets a viral moment.
Some artists might be worried that people are enjoying something like this for the wrong reasons… that they’re taking the piss out of this bitter divorce song by making it into a dance craze. But they seem to be laughing with it and its gallows humor.
Yeah, the song is a gallows humor song. Obviously if I have some songs that are especially personal to me, I hope they get taken in the spirit in which they were written. But the artist does not dictate the terms in which his art is understood. I’m not here to tell you how to enjoy it. I have songs where you’re not supposed to like the narrator, and then people do like the narrator, and that can be frustrating to me a little bit. But there’s almost always a thread of humor running through the songs. It’s more fun for us if you can both laugh and be horrified at the same time.
@13leu alone at 6am #themountaingoats #foodservice #fypシ #art #music #trending #viral
♬ original sound – bleu
Have you seen any of the subgenre of cat choreography “No Children” TikTok videos?
I did hear something about one of those. I trust that people are treating their cats well. But no, I haven’t. Are there any farm animal ones? That would be for me as a great lover of farm animals, I feel like some pigs and cows, that would be exciting for me.
Their arms would be harder to manipulate than cats’.
Well, you have to reason with the pigs. You have to talk the pigs into it. They’re very smart animals. I don’t think you can teach a cow to do anything.
@butterfly_and_poppy The tops of our heads peeking out is the cherry on top of this production quality
