Dragonhead

Album: Hunkpapa (1989)
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Songfacts®:

  • While Kristin Hersh wrote most of Throwing Muses' songs, her co-frontwoman and stepsister Tanya Donelly regularly penned one or two tracks on each record. Her contributions were invariably more poppy and straightforward than Hersh's stark and candid tunes. This song, which captures the brutal-yet-innocent violence of a child's imagination and dreams, is one of two songs she wrote for Hunkpapa, their third album.
  • Though Tanya Donelly penned the song in just 20 minutes, it encouraged her as a songwriter. She told Uncut:

    "I felt like I locked into something with that song, that it was a step forward, a feeling that I was... on the right bus.

    Kristin came over to my mother's house. She had her Walkman and her headphones on and she had just heard the finished 'Dragonhead' and said, 'I just wanted to come over to say that the song is very wonderful and you should write more.' It was moving to me that her message should be: you should take up more space."

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