The Four Lads (Not They Might Be Giants)

Here's a bit of a leftover from when I watched Mona Lisa Smile on Thursday night.

I had always thought -- had no reason not to think -- that the band They Might Be Giants were responsible for the humorous novelty song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

You know the one:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul not Constantinople
Been a long time gone from Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

The ditty was perfectly in keeping with the wordplay-heavy cuteness of TMBG's work. That's not a backhand compliment. I always really liked their work, particularly the 1990 album Flood, on which "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" can be found.

Alas, it's not their song, a truth I figured out pretty quickly when it played in the 1953-set Mona Lisa Smile.

In fact, the song dates back exactly to 1953. The lyrics are by Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon, and the song was first recorded by a band called The Four Lads, whose years active on Wikipedia are listed as "1950 to present." (Yeah, somehow I doubt that, unless some of those lads are still performing in their nineties.)

Although it's always useful to learn the truth of the matter on things like this, I can't help but be a little disappointed. I would not call "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" my favorite track on Flood, or maybe even one of my top three, but it had always served as sort of a proof of concept for me. Like if I wanted to quickly explain to someone the essence of They Might Be Giants and what made them great, this song would be a good Exhibit A, a proof of concept. Whereas "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and the 47-second "Minimum Wage" don't accomplish this as succinctly.

At least no one better tell me that "Particle Man" is not a Giants original. 

As a bit of a side note, the use of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" in Mona Lisa Smile was a good case of the movie being accurate with its history. By far the worst movie I saw over the weekend, the aforementioned Fear Street: Prom Queen, played fast and loose with the year Roxette's "The Look" came out, and don't think I didn't notice. 

I enjoyed the sequence where all the prom queen contenders participate in a choreographed dance to the song -- it was literally the only thing I liked in the movie -- but I couldn't escape the feeling that 1988 was a bit early for Roxette. True enough, when I looked it up later, I found that the song was not released as a single until January of 1989, three months after the album came out. So while somebody did enough research to figure out that the song existed, just barely, in the latter part of 1988, they didn't consider that of course May is prom season, and so in May of 1988, it was still just a twinkle in Roxette's eye.