Lyrical Content
The song describes four different "men": Particle Man, a microscopic being whose attributes are deemed "not important" enough to be discussed lyrically; Triangle Man, a belligerent entity who hates Particle Man, fights him, and wins; Universe Man, a kinder being, who is the size of the universe, and has a watch with hands relevant to the age of the universe ("He’s got a watch with a minute hand, a millennium hand, and an eon hand"); and Person Man, a "degraded" being who lives in a garbage can, and who is also despised, provocated, and defeated by Triangle Man. The song's author, John Linnell, denied the idea that there is a deeper meaning to "Particle Man", stating on a phone interview filmed for Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), that "nothing is missing from your understanding of 'Particle Man'". Band member John Flansburgh described it as “just a song about characters in the most obvious sense” and claims that the lyrics are not intended to invoke real people, though Linnell claims that "Triangle Man was based on a friend's observation that Robert Mitchum looked like an evil triangle when he took his shirt off in Night of the Hunter. Nothing else not explicitly stated need be inferred."
Read more about this topic: Particle Man
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