Songfacts®:

• Dave Grohl wrote this song after getting the divorce papers from his first wife, Jennifer Youngblood. The couple were married in 1994 a few months after Kurt Cobain died, but they divorced two years later. This was a very difficult time for Grohl, as he was looking for direction in both his personal and professional life. After he got the divorce papers, he wrote this song, which he later described as "an emotional, sappy song about getting dumped."
  
  While he allowed himself to wallow on this track, he also wrote another much more hopeful song recalling his initial feelings for Jennifer. That was "Everlong," which became one of their most beloved songs.
• On the album version of this song, Grohl is the only performer. The Foo Fighters also recorded a version for the X-Files soundtrack with the full band, which is the only song guitarist Franz Stahl, who was with the band for only a short time, appears on.
• In 2006, Foo Fighters recorded an acoustic version for their album Skin And Bones. Pat Smear, who was a guitarist with both Foo Fighters and Nirvana, appears on this version along with Rami Jafee and Petra Haden.
• In an interview on the MTV2 show 24 Hours Of Foo, Grohl said he hated the video for this song, which doesn't have the fun, quirky tone of many Foo Fighters videos. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bert - Pueblo, NM, for above 3
• The Colour And The Shape is primarily inspired by Grohl's separation and divorce from Jennifer Youngblood. During a 1997 interview with Vox magazine, the Foo Fighters frontman explained the sequencing of the album is like a visit to a therapist, switching between uptempo tracks and ballads to reflect conflicting emotions.
  
  "The first song, 'Doll,' is all about your fear of entering into something you weren't prepared for, which is the way I feel about mostly everything," he explained. "I go through this whole therapy session, and I end up at the last track, when I realize that it's OK, I can make my way through all of this, and I'm not that freaked out at the end. We were joking for a while when we were thinking about work for the album. I thought, why don't we put a picture of a therapist's couch on it? For the rest of my life, when I listen to this record, it will be the Fall of 1996, and my journal entries, which is a little strange."
• A re-recorded version plays during the end credit sequence of the 1998 The X-Files movie.