Many of the Mountain Goats' song titles read "Going to (fill in the blank)." They often deal with a sense of restlessness and a character's need to escape their situation. Some are love songs, like 'Going to Port Washington' and 'Going to Scotland'. The majority of the 'Going to...' songs are unreleased, and are often played at live shows. There are no known 'Going to...' songs from the years between 2005 and 2020, after which Songs for Pierre Chuvin included 'Going to Lebanon 2' and Jenny from Thebes included 'Going to Dallas.'
Songs[]
Comments by John Darnielle about this series[]
- "In my music, there's a whole series of songs, uh, going to blank, all these song titles, Going to California, Going to Morocco, wherever. These songs just started as a way of making fun of all my peers from high school, uh, 'cause in Southern California, and probably everywhere but when you're younger, any problem that's local seems specific to where you're from instead of general to the human condition and, uh, and all these people I grew up with, especially if they'd been to Europe or New York, would come back to Claremont and go, oh, I hate it here, I can't wait to go back to New York. And I would go, you know, you're going to bring your problems with you to New York, it's not like New York is full of perfect people. And so I started writing these songs to make fun of that urge to flee where you're from, uh, and romanticize the place that you're going to. But it became a productive thing, because eventually you go someplace yourself, you wind up fleeing." -- 2016-04-14 Calvin College lecture
Trivia[]
- For the Art Assignment video series, Empty Disco created a Mountain Goats-esque song called 'Going to Ithaca.