Then: The Earlier Years is a double album compilation by the band They Might Be Giants, released in 1997. Then contains the album Lincoln in its entirety, the albums They Might Be Giants and Miscellaneous T which are each missing one track, a few otherwise unreleased songs from their 1985 Demo Tape and other songs previously unreleased. The song missing from Miscellaneous T is "(She Was a) Hotel Detective " and the song missing from They Might Be Giants is the album version of "Don't Let's Start", as it was replaced in its appropriate place in the track listing by the single version of the same song from Miscellaneous T.

Lincoln is the second studio album by the band They Might Be Giants. It was released by Bar/None in 1988. The album is named after John Linnell and John Flansburgh's boyhood home of Lincoln, Massachusetts. The album produced three singles—"Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", and "Purple Toupee". It is included on Then: The Earlier Years, a compilation of the band's early material, in its entirety.