Climbing

Album: The Wonderground (2003)
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Songfacts®:

  • Boy Meets Girl are songwriters George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam. They were married throughout the '90s and continued their musical partnership after separating around 2000. They spoke with us about this song:

    Shannon: "That is what we basically initiated this project with. At the time we just didn't know that a few months down the line we'd be breaking up, and we were thinking about getting ourselves back up on our musical feet again, because it had been a decade since we recorded an album. And this time we were doing it without a record company and a big studio, and without support. We were just doing it on our own. So Climbing is really the psyching-up kind of story about how you're going to get back on your feet and pick up the pieces and have a glorious time of it, and f--k you to all the vultures circling around."

    George: "We'd found our humor again. That's one of the things I love about that song is that first verse… we're able to laugh about how hurt we were about losing a record deal and all that stuff. Enough time had gone by that we just realized we were on our way up again."

    Shannon: "Yeah. And to be optimistic about it. That was really the crux of that song. I remember sitting in our Malibu house and we did have vultures, and they circled the ravine right down by our house. There would be all kinds of little critters down there. Easy mark. So I remember watching them and thinking, 'You know, I kind of feel like they're circling us, too.'" (Thanks to George and Shannon for speaking with us about this song. Check out the Boy Meets Girl website at www.boymeetsgirlmusic.com.)

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