MJ Lenderman's 2024 album Manning Fireworks was both critically lauded and well-memed, which is just about the highest praise a record can get these days. One line in particular from one of the album's singles, "Wristwatch," comes with a chorus groundswell that crowds across the continent and beyond can't help but holler along to: "I've got a houseboat docked at the himbo dome."
Part of the brilliance of such a line is the questioning that it inevitably provokes: What is a himbo dome? Are only card-carrying himbos allowed access? How does one become a certified himbo?
Lenderman is well aware of the lyrical nonsensicalness, and did in fact have some trepidation about it. In a new interview for Alabama Public Television, he admitted that he almost cut the line from the song.
"I was in kind of a weird zone with the record. I wasn't sure what it was, if it was like, maybe going to be an EP," the singer-songwriter reflected. "And then I spent 10 hours on the phone one day with a good friend of mine who kind of lets me bounce ideas off of him and helps me write a lot."
Lenderman continued, "When the 'himbo dome' line came up, that made us laugh really hard. It was kind of insane; like, maybe we shouldn't put this in the song… what even is that? But it just made us laugh so hard that we had to do it."
Watch the clip from the interview in which he discusses the decision-making process behind the "Wristwatch" lyric below. To be fair, it still probably makes more sense than having a beach house in Buffalo!