So, Let's Start?

I thought that I'd start somewhere small while I get my footing writing about music. And where smaller to start than a small little song? Small in production, length, scale, and feeling. It's a song that's important to me because of my personal interpretation moreso than it's actual content.

Instant Fan

They Might Be Giants has long been my favorite band for their variety of music and playful treatment of their music and lyrics. A song can be a play on words, an exploration of a failing relationship, a fun concept, or just a joke. Many of my favorite songs are just little B-sides that tickle me. I'll save covering They Might Be Giants (or TMBG) as a whole until later, but it's good to preface this by saying I'm an avid listener of their catalogue of work.
In 2001 TMBG launched a service called TMBG Unlimited , an early attempt at a limited music subscription service where for a years time you'd get new tracks on a regular basis.

any exclusive recordings were only released through TMBG Unlimited and can no longer be obtained. The TMBG Clock Radio streaming service featured many of these songs until it was shut down in 2013.

This Might Be A Wiki, which always has good info on the band

Early previews, exclusive versions, and some tracks that were never officially re-released. Luckily the tracks in question have been preserved or I couldn't talk about them today, as I was only 6 at the time and couldn't exactly make media purchasing decisions quite yet.
I discovered this song many years later through the above mentioned radio app, and then later rediscovered it through an archive of the Unlimited tracks. Ever since then it's stuck with me.

I'm Not a Real Tiny Doctor

Tiny Doctors is a simple first draft track. A quick recording to cassette before further drafts that never came. As such it feels rough, small, but also close and intimate. To me it feels like you're listening to something personal, like a little song someone sings to themselves when they don't feel like anyone is listening. The bad acoustics, single singer and instrument, the dog barking in the background and the tape hiss, they all contribute to the feeling that I'm hearing in on some sort of lost recovered audio. Just take a listen to hear what I'm talking about.
What little information there is on Tiny Doctors says that it's one of several tracks from a tape of drafts for the album Flood but that even tracks that made it to their answer machine based service Dial-a-Song, where many early previews of songs that may or may not get finished could be heard by any caller, were at least in the second draft stage. Tiny Doctors didn't make it that far but honestly I feel like further production might change what I like about this song.
The intimacy in this song is quiet but also melancholic. We're not looking at your bog standard C major key pop song chords even is nothing is too exotic here, instead it's a vaguely sad little song about how your body is working to keep you healthy. It seems like what someone would sing for comfort when they feel unwell as a reminder that their body is working hard, that they're looking our for themselves in a sort of abstract and subconscious way.
I can't be sure of artist intent here, especially since this song hasn't really come up again, but as someone who's chronically ill, who's spent much of their time in doctor's offices or hospital beds, getting bedrest and bloodwork, there's something very somber and relatable to me. A reminder that my body is working hard, but a reminder that I'm unwell, that something is wrong with me, that my body is not full of tiny doctors in the same way as someone healthier. It's a song I think about a lot when I'm sick and I often listen to it during those quiet moments in bed by myself. It's something I'm not sure more words could elaborate on better than the mood set by what feels like a cheap recording in a shitty apartment.
I'm not sure if that mood entirely comes across to everyone and that it's just a silly little demo track. But that's what I like so much about demo tracks and musical sketches like these. They're the seeds of ideas, free to germinate in the listener. I think that development of a demo in the listener is part of why dedicated fans of musicians hold so tightly to B-sides and rarities. Sometimes, to a degree, it feels like you've stumbled upon something and over time it's become yours, internally at least.