Ana Ng
| "Ana Ng" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by They Might Be Giants | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Lincoln | ||||||||||||||
| B-side | "Snowball in Hell" | |||||||||||||
| Released | 1988 | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7", 12", CD single | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 1988 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Alternative rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 3:23 | |||||||||||||
| Label |
Bar/None / Restless (U.S.) One Little Indian (UK) Liberation (AU) Elektra / WEA (EU) |
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| Songwriter(s) | John Flansburgh, John Linnell | |||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Bill Krauss | |||||||||||||
| They Might Be Giants singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"Ana Ng" /ˈænə ˈɛŋ/ is a song by alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. It was released as the lead single from the band's 1988 album Lincoln. Although the song was their first US chart appearance, hitting #11 on the US Modern Rock chart, the single was never officially released in the US. It was only released for promotional purposes in the US, and saw official releases in 1989 in the United Kingdom (as a maxi-single), Australia, and later, in 1991, in Europe.
The title of the track came from an experience the Johns had when they found a huge number of Ng listings in the New York City phone book.
Linnell: "I think I was collecting possible song ideas and, for some reason, I ended up looking in the phone book, and there were about four pages of this name that contains no vowels, Ng. I was fascinated because it's a name I didn't know about before, and it was filling up a large chunk of the Manhattan white pages. I called up some of the numbers kind of experimentally to find out how it was pronounced, and I got the phone machine of a Dr. Ng and I was kind of relieved. The message said, "Dr. Ng is not in," and I had my material." (Pitchfork Magazine, 1996)
Ng is a common Cantonese family name, and in Cantonese it is pronounced [ŋ̍], like the last sound in the English word song. However, according to a 1988 handbill advertisement for the single, They Might Be Giants actually rhyme the name with hang, /ˈæŋ/.
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