Songfacts®:

• Lumineers lead vocalist and guitarist Wesley Schultz recalls his early days as a musician on this song, when he moved from Ramsey, New Jersey to Brooklyn, hoping to make the big time. However, the glamorous bohemian lifestyle and the rewarding gigs didn't happen. "New York, it lied to me, I needed the truth," he sings. "The cost of living is so high," Schultz explained to American Songwriter magazine. "I became so disenchanted – there's this myth that New York is the place to be to express and build yourself as an artist. And it may be for some people. But it wasn't for me."
• The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Israel and Jordan. Due to its high salt content, swimming in the Dead Sea is more akin to floating, which is why it makes a handy metaphor for a supportive partner in the Lumineers' song. Schultz, however, didn't come up with the idea on his own.
  
  "My wife said that to me when we were dating," he told Nola.com in a 2013 interview. "She was going through a tough time, and she said to me, 'You're like my dead sea.' I said, 'Well, what do you mean?' and she said, 'I'm supposed to be sinking right now, and everything tells me I should sink like a stone, I'm feeling really low. But you're holding me up and even if I tried, I couldn't sink.'
  
  I said, 'Did you come up with that? Because I really like that line, I'm going to turn it into a song."
• Schultz also incorporated some real-life details about his future wife, Brandy, in the song. In the second verse, he describes a woman who escapes a life of domesticity after her father dies and strikes out on her own. Schultz explained the origin of the lyrics in a 2016 interview with The Aquarian:
  
  "In the 'Dead Sea' there's a part, 'Your father died and you decided to live it for yourself.' After her dad died she went on this trip and she was sleeping in the airport waiting for a flight and somebody took all her bags. 'You left with just the clothes on your back. They took the rest when you took a nap.'"
• Schultz almost ruined Valentine's Day when he gave the song to Brandy as a cleverly disguised gift. He told the story to Atwood Magazine in 2020:
  
  "I hid it in a box of chocolates because she said she hated when people gave people boxes of chocolates. So as a joke, I sort of cut out the shape, and put it in there, and sent it to her (we were living long distance at the time). She didn't even bother to open it, she was so frustrated with my gift! And then I made her go back, drive home, and open it – because she had left for work, and then she had the lyrics and she listened to the song. So for me, that's a proper love song that I really love, because the word 'dead' being in the title doesn't sound like it would be a love song or a happy song."
• Schultz credits his bandmate Jeremiah Fraites (drums, piano) for turning a decent song into something album-worthy.
  
  "That song is a classic example where I had the bulk of the song written on the guitar, and then he added that minor chord… and that made the song worth listening to," he told American Songwriter in 2013. "I think before that it was a nice song… it wasn't anything maybe worth recording."
• After the band realized they couldn't keep up with the cost of living in New York and make music at the same time, they relocated to Denver, Colorado, and found their groove in the open-mic scene. But they actually recorded their self-titled debut album in Seattle at producer Ryan Hadlock's Bear Creek Studio. Their first single, "Ho Hey," made the rounds on TV and radio and generated buzz for the album, which went to #2 on the all-genre Billboard 200 and #1 on the US Alternative Albums, Folk Albums, and Rock Albums charts, among others.
  
  The Lumineers were filed alongside other rustic alt-folk acts of the time, like Mumford & Sons, the Civil Wars, and The Avett Brothers. But even as the genre's popularity waned, the band managed to stand out, with singles like "Ophelia," "Gloria" and "Brightside" hitting the charts throughout the rest of the decade.