Dirty Paws by Of Monsters and Men

Album: My Head is an Animal (2011)

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Songfacts®:

"Dirty Paws" is an early song from Of Monsters and Men, a group from Reykjavík, Iceland who specialize in story songs delivered in vocal unison by their co-lead singers, Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdottir and Ragnar "Raggi" Thorhallsson.

Animal fables are a tradition in Iceland, and this song falls into that category. The story is very much open to interpretation (and the band prefers not to explain it), but there is a war between the birds and bees, a dragonfly narrator, and furry creatures with dirty paws who get involved. The bees seem to be the aggressors, and they lose in the end.

There's plenty of symbolism in the lyric if you're looking for it - these creatures pick sides and go to war just like humans. The song has held up very well since its release in 2011; it remains one of the most popular songs from Of Monsters and Men and one they almost always include in their setlists.
The album title, My Head Is An Animal, comes from the second line in this song:

Jumping up and down the floor
My head is an animal

Thorhallsson says they chose the title because it sums up the album.
Hey! This song was released in 2011 when the campfire singalong style punctuated by lots of "hey!"s was big. You can also hear it in the lead single from the album, "Little Talks," and in the music of The Lumineers and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.
The My Head Is An Animal album was first released in Iceland in the fall of 2011 and got an international release in the spring of 2012. That summer they became a big festival act, performing at Coachella, Glastonbury, and Lollapalooza. They waited until 2015 to release another album; they still had a big fanbase at this point but their sound was no longer in the popular vanguard. The slowed down considerably from that point forward but kept making music.
The song found a new audience when it was featured in Ben Stiller's 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, playing during a sequence filmed (fittingly) in Iceland. It also appears on the film's soundtrack.

Comments: 1

Shawn from OsoyoosThe first time I heard this song I was driving 1/2 way across Canada in a moving van and it was on an Indie station in the middle of nowhere. Earlier that day before the drive I had to put my 16 year old Blue Heeler down and spent a lot of the drive crying about it. His dirty paw prints were still on my shirt. I heard the song and lost my s--t. That was several years ago but sometimes I play this song out of nostalgia to bring me back to that time and the years before that to remember and honour the best dog that ever lived.

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