I’ll start of my musical analysis with my favorite song of all time. Dirty Paws sung and written by the band Of Monsters And Men. I can listen to this song over and over again never get tired of it. The beat is fairly fast paced which gives is an air of happy-ness but at the beginning the vocalist sings in a sad tone. It makes me feel like a kid probably because it is such a nostalgic song. Plus folk music just sounds homey to me.
Origins:
The band is icelandic and the song was released April 12, 2012. Of Monsters and Men’s genre is an indie, folk, pop, hybrid.
Meter, Tempo, and Harmony:
Dirty paws is odd in the sense that it only has three verses, however it is still about 4 minutes and 30 seconds long. It has no chorus and no bridge. The rest of the song is instrumental and “La”s. The song’s meter is 4/4 and played at 112 BPM. The guitar melody that you hear in the intro travels through the whole song aside from the instrumentals and the “la”s.
The song starts of with a beautiful guitar melody and then on the ninth meter the vocalists begin with a harmony that gives me goose bumps every time. The female singer in much more predominant, however the male’s voice is an amazing contrast the the song wouldn’t be the same without.
Lyrics:
It paints a story that you can follow and picture in your head (even if the story sounds a little weird and like it was written while the writer was possibly on something but what good song doesn’t sound like that?). I’m one of those people who doesn’t listen to the lyrics as much as the beat and rhythm. So when I finally tried to break this dong down to understand the story behind it I was entirely confused. I had always thought that it was about a battle between the sexes because it is a battle between the birds and the bees because “the sky wasn’t big enough for them all”. But then it goes on to talk about a dragonflies and mowing lawns and creatures of snow and I got confused. I looked online to see if the band had an explanation but they didn’t and all I could find were fans tryin to come up with their own explanations. Ranging from WWII to a cat on an adventure.
Lyrics:
Jumping up and down the floor
My head is an animal
And once there was an animal
It had a son that mowed the lawn
The son was an okay guy
They had a pet dragonfly
The dragonfly, it ran away
But it came back with a story to say
[Verse 2]
Her dirty paws and furry coat
She ran down the forest slopes
The forest of talking trees
They used to sing about the birds and the bees
The bees had declared a war
The sky wasn’t big enough for them all
The birds, they got help from below
From dirty paws and the creatures of snow
[Refrain]
La la la
La la la, la
La la la
La la la, la
[Instrumental]
[Verse 3]
So for a while, things were cold
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
But she and her furry friends
Took down the queen bee and her men
And that’s how the story goes
The story of the beast with those four dirty paws
[Refrain] x2
La la la
La la la, la
La la la
La la la, la
-“Of Monsters And Men – Dirty Paws Lyrics.” SongMeanings, songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858883535/.
-“Dirty Paws.” Dirty Paws by Of Monsters and Men | BPM | Key | Find Song Tempo, findsongtempo.com/artists/of-monsters-and-men/songs/dirty-paws-c271061f-a694-4f60-a0ea-5aabdcf8c07d.
-“Of Monsters and Men – Dirty Paws.” Genius, 12 Apr. 2012, genius.com/Of-monsters-and-men-dirty-paws-lyrics.
Onyx Odyssey 
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I am impressed with how catchy this song is. I find it to be a very upbeat positive song in my opinion. I didn’t catch any sad tones. From the animation in the video and almost random lyrics, it made me think about fairy tales and folklore rather than some deep meaning of WWII or love. It reminded me of the folklore that Inupiat people have about life lessons or how things came to be in this world. I looked up some of the folklore that Icelandic people have and I could see this fitting into that perfectly. Maybe it was the bands musical interpretation on some of their fairy tales. Another view I had of the song was that of an imaginative child. If I just looked at the lyrics without the video, it was confusing and almost abstract. Then, the more I focused on each individual verse, the more I could see it as a story. The child’s mind created this “son” who had a pet. The pet took a trip and came back to tell this crazy story that it either heard or saw about a dirty pawed monster. Either guess, to me, seemed a lot more interesting and fun compared to war, especially paired with such an upbeat tune.
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I hate to reveal that it’s “Ra, Ra, Ra” like a beast and not “la, la” like a song.
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