Michael Shannon’s Armadillo Song Isn’t Quite Zoologically Accurate

Michael Shannon’s aggressive dad vibes grow stronger with each passing day. Appearing on Late Night With Seth Meyers to promote Nine Perfect Strangers (in which he wears a lot of polo shirts tucked into jeans), the actor and musician played a song he wrote at 15 for his band, Jehovah’s Suspects. Titled simply “The Armadillo Song,” it’s a Southern rock ditty about the trials and tribulations of a young desert mammal. “I remember the day when I left home / My mama started crying and my pop gave me a comb” the second verse goes. “He said you gotta look presentable otherwise they don’t care / He never seemed to notice we ain’t got no hair!” Shannon admits, though, that he had never seen an armadillo when he wrote that song. On a camping trip years later, he discovered that armadillos do, in fact, have hair — it’s just on their underbellies. Still, he didn’t feel the need to change the lyrics, because, “when you’re at MSG playing the song you don’t want people getting confused.” We’ll be front-row center when Jehovah’s Suspects headline Madison Square, but until then just imagine your dad Michael Shannon pulling out his guitar at a backyard barbecue and serenading everyone with “The Armadillo Song.” Ah, soothing.