Imitosis is the full incarnation of a song on Weather Systems named simply "I". Is it true there were copyright issues that prevented the full version from appearing on Weather Systems?
"Yeah, the version on Weather Systems is just something to bide my time while we worked that out. Musically that pizzicato pattern has just been so fertile for ideas over the past couple years. The song has been been morphing as I’ve been playing it live and I enjoy that feel so whether I got all the lyrics in there wasn’t that important."
And what was the issue with the lyrics?
"It was based on a childhood memory of a skit from Sesame Street where these men live inside a capital I and they come out and they polish the I and they sing this song, which goes, “We all live in a capital I”. Instead of saying “We’re all basically alone” I would say “We all live in a capital I”, which is basically saying the same thing. There’s no other resemblance to the original Sesame Street version melodically or – beyond those lyrics – anything. But we went to Sesame Street and we said, “Hey, we’ve got this song, it’s based on a childhood memory of this skit.” And they led us along for a while and said, "Talk to our publisher, blah blah blah." And it took several years for them to say, “We don’t want to do this.” So instead of getting angry I just stayed up all night and rewrote the lyrics."
This is from a 2007 interview from "gothamist.com"
gothamist.com/2007/05/16/andrew_bird_musician.php
Imitosis is the full incarnation of a song on Weather Systems named simply "I". Is it true there were copyright issues that prevented the full version from appearing on Weather Systems?
"Yeah, the version on Weather Systems is just something to bide my time while we worked that out. Musically that pizzicato pattern has just been so fertile for ideas over the past couple years. The song has been been morphing as I’ve been playing it live and I enjoy that feel so whether I got all the lyrics in there wasn’t that important."
And what was the issue with the lyrics?
"It was based on a childhood memory of a skit from Sesame Street where these men live inside a capital I and they come out and they polish the I and they sing this song, which goes, “We all live in a capital I”. Instead of saying “We’re all basically alone” I would say “We all live in a capital I”, which is basically saying the same thing. There’s no other resemblance to the original Sesame Street version melodically or – beyond those lyrics – anything. But we went to Sesame Street and we said, “Hey, we’ve got this song, it’s based on a childhood memory of this skit.” And they led us along for a while and said, "Talk to our publisher, blah blah blah." And it took several years for them to say, “We don’t want to do this.” So instead of getting angry I just stayed up all night and rewrote the lyrics."