F-sharp minor and A major divide the octave into equal intervals. The music also interpolates elements of "Summer in the City" by The Lovin' Spoonful. The car horn-like trumpet sound in the bridge of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" recalls the sounds of traffic in "Summer in the City" and both songs use similar rhythms in their chord progressions. Linnell states that these references were inspired by the intense heat during the album's recording in the summer of 1989. In April 1990, They Might Be Giants appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to promote the release of Flood. As part of the appearance, Linnell and Flansburgh performed "Birdhouse in Your Soul" with Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band. Severinsen's unusually fast count-in resulted in a performance with a noticeably higher tempo than the album recording. The band adopted a similar tempo for subsequent live performances. Music video The music video for "Birdhouse in Your Soul" was directed by Adam Bernstein and filmed in the New York County's Surrogate's Courthouse building in Manhattan in 1989. The video features Linnell and Flansburgh moving and performing erratically amidst a group of dancers dressed in red plaid shirts. In the video, the dancers wear masks made from sunglasses affixed with an image of the eyes of William Allen White, whose face is used frequently in the band's visual material. These props were designed by John Flansburgh. In an article on They Might Be Giants' music videos, Emily Petermann speculates that the zombie-like behavior of the dancers, coupled with the video's warehouse setting, evokes "oppressed factory workers". Petermann finds this to be at odds with the song's "cheerful" music. On the other hand, the "non sequitur" lyrics and "surreal" musical elements—such as modulation—are complemented by moments of "nonsense" in the video, such as when "[Linnell and Flansburgh's] performance becomes embedded in a bizarre situation or the performance is abandoned altogether". Reception "Birdhouse in Your Soul" received positive attention from critics. In his review of Flood for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it one of the band's "finest singles". Reviewing the single alone, Stewart Mason elaborates that, compared to previous releases, the high production value highlights Linnell and Flansburgh's "knack for dynamics and arrangement". Mason also speculates that the song's popularity stems from the modest depth of its lyric, which is somewhat oblique on the surface but ultimately "easy to figure out", giving the