Dead Shark

[wooden and alone]

i know she already explained what this song is about? but i was watching annie hall and there was a scene in a plane wherein the same analogy of a relationship as a shark was used. so maybe liz got the idea for the song from this scene. more like most probably.

i love this song by the way.

[harkrider]

You would think she's seen Annie Hall, and would like it.  Isn't that the one where Christopher Walken plays her brother, and he talks about the headlights, how he just envisions himself swerving into oncoming traffic...  Then he drives them home.

I like Dead Shark mostly for its guitar work.  But the lyrics are great and most of us can relate to that situation.  I especially like the part where she sings: "I'm not looking over my shoulder...  I'm not gazing up at the stars."  --  which pretty much covers the gamut of human concerns.  It's funny to bring cosmic scale to an interpersonal situation, and then disregard it.  People worry about what they can't control.  This applies both to meteors and to the opinions of other people (looking over your shoulder).

To me, the song is about a girl trying to talk a guy out of being angry about something completely external to both of them, to re-normalize the equation and include only significant facts.  They should like each other right now, irregardless of whatever bullshit is playing itself out elsewhere, either clique-ishly or cosmically.

[wooden and alone]

wow.

i didn't even think of it that much. you're right. the song is probably about that.
in the annie hall scene, woody allen says we got a dead shark in our hands. that's why i asked.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

I need to go out and buy Annie Hall.  I went out bought Play It Again Sam, which was the previous one that Woody Allen made.

We've got some interesting connections with Ann in my family.  Anne is my mother's name and Ann is my wife's middle name. 

Best Buy didn't have a copy of Annie Hall this afternoon when I looked.

[JeremyEngle]

I, too, think highly of the guitar playing on "Dead Shark" -- the last few sections right at the end are particularly  impressive. It's definitely the best thing about the song.

Interesting thing about the Annie Hall connection: when Liz wrote the song, she was apparently thinking about something her friend Nora (the infamous San Francisco Nora on whom Chris Brokaw had a crush) said about relationships and sharks. Nora, of course, had more than likely seen Annie Hall. I'm sure Liz has seen it by now, but at the time it was probably one of many very popular things of which Liz was totally ignorant. (For the record, I've never seen any of the Star Wars movies.)