Talk:They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

message: "This is the first known instance of backmasking in popular music."
The Beatles' "Rain" was first, wasn't it?
The singer's dog?  I thought he was calling her a dog in the metaphoric sense.
Yeah, it wouldnt make much sense if she was literally a dog.
My original "that's definitely not a dog" comment deleted, because it's apparently official from "Napoleon" himself that the song is about a dog, according to Songfacts.  He wrote the song over a period of nine months, one verse at a time, and the idea that it was a dog was added at pretty much the last second, to lighten an otherwise "sick" song.  The song's sequel, "They're Coming To Get Me Again, Ha-Haaa!", makes it more clear.  That still doesn't explain the "reply" by Josephine XV on one of Samuels own albums, entitled "I'm Happy They Took You Away, Ha-Haaa!", nor does it explain why he cooked food and cleaned house for a dog, but whatever.   It's official and stuff. - 67.191.254.83 11:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just look at the album cover, he's standing next to a fire hydrant, holding a novelty "invisible dog" collar and leash. You're right, the song is about a missing dog.--RLent (talk) 19:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: But, he says she laughed when he told her he'd go crazy if she ran away. That doesn't sound like it's referring to a literal dog at all. I suspect something similar to "Timothy" might be going on here; the Buoys claimed that Timothy was a mule in order to lessen the impact of the song; perhaps Napoleon was doing the same thing with the dog thing. FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 00:03, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

message: The song debuted at 50, then went to 11, 5, 3, 5 and plummeted to 37 then off the chart. Some editor keeps removing the correct information (which much be sourced, golly, even though it's WRONG). The song peaked in its fourth week and had its final week on the chart in its sixth.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.229.113.100 (talk) 19:34, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Billboard Hot 100 Chart Run 

message: Is the B-side quite literally the recording of the A-side run backwards - with no extra instrumentation or augmentation etc - or did the band "play" the song backwards? -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 13:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  !aaaH 

message: This section could use some cleanup. It should probably be in chronological order and a few of the less notable appearances can be removed. Twalls (talk) 18:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Covers and other appearances

message: I attended a Children of Bodom concert on the 12th of September, 2008, in Norfolk, Virginia, and they played the first 20 seconds or so of this song as an intro to their set.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zippeh (talk • contribs) 03:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Children of Bodom 

message: "...sung slowly over implacable noises" - what on earth does that mean? "Implacable" means it can't be appeased or pacified. I haven't heard this particular version, so I'm not even going to guess at what was meant by this statement: has anyone got an adjective that would work in this context? Dom Kaos (talk) 16:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Nurse with Wound's cover version

message: Michael Nesmith sang the lead? I thought it was Micky Dolenz who sang the lead on "Gonna Buy Me a Dog," on their first released album The Monkees.  jen (talk) 16:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Gonna Buy Me a Dog

message: 1. Moved chart position info to the intro section.
2. Created new heading "Background" with details about the formation of the song.
3. Created a "Story" section which tells the story of the song. Removed the unsourced suggestion that the "Ha Haaa" of "They're coming to Take Me Away, Ha Haaa!" might refer to a female dog.
4. Created a new section "Backlash" incorporating the previous info re backlash to the song, and included additional info (protests/plane banner).
5. Removed "WABC (AM 77) played the song back to back several times during one afternoon" as it did not make sense where it was.
Guyburns (talk) 17:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major Edit 

message: The article mentions the appearance of a spoof of Napoleon on the cover.  Why not a comment in the article that "They're coming to take me away, ha-ha" could also be a humorous (?) reference to Napoleon being taken to exile (Elba, and later St. Helena)?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.82 (talk) 16:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  And a spoof of Napoleon's exile? 

message: Reading the lyrics (http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~norm/TakeMeAway.html), listening to the words, looking at the cover, clearly indicates this song is about a mentally ill person talking about his dog who has run away. Therefore, I have edited the "Story" section to that dated 30 Mar 2012 (based on that dated 17 Aug 2011).
Guyburns (talk) 10:14, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to be clear, the writer/artist is quoted by sources as saying that after he composed the spoken lyrics, he feared it came off as a sick joke at the expense of the mentally ill, so he deliberately added the line about the dog in the third verse so people would realize it was about a runaway dog and not a human. This type of "setup then switch" humor might be considered lame today, but as a 7th grader in 1966, I can confirm it was the height of MAD magazine style juvenile hilarity among young people (parents of course did not think it was funny). This was long before hip hop culture where women are casually referred to as mutts and ho's in song lyrics, so I can understand some younger editors not being able to believe it was just a novelty joke record where a guy sounds like he's talking about a woman but it turns out he's talking about a dog. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:12, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  The song's about a dog, not a woman 

message: Info I found says: Mike Maltese, Warren Foster, Billy May. 198.53.137.96 (talk) 03:41, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Composer(s)

message: I have read that the drums are simply a loop of the intro beat of Bob Dylan's "Everybody Must Get Stoned." Keith D. Tyler ¶ 03:59, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’, yes?THX1136 (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source of drum beat.  

message: It has been observed. Drsruli (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maybe the first rap song ever