With songs like “Ghost” and “Family,” Badflower is no stranger to tackling difficult topics. But their track “Paws” might be an especially tough listen.
“Paws,” the current single off Badflower’s new album, No Place Like Home, is about frontman Josh Katz‘s dog, who passed away shortly after the song was released.
As Katz tells ABC Audio, he didn’t initially set out to write about his dog. He had come up with the lyric “You could never know it was your time to go,” which opens the chorus of “Paws,” as a sort of placeholder before realizing what it truly meant.
“While I was writing the song, my dog was in the room with me as she always was when I was writing,” Katz says. “My dog was very old at the time, and it just hit me in that moment. I looked at her and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, f***. I know what this song is about, I know what this is gonna be.'”
While Katz wrote “Paws” in anticipation of losing his dog, he still wasn’t prepared for how it felt when the moment came.
“There’s certain complexities to how I felt that I almost wish I could write maybe a new song that’s like, ‘OK … now that it’s actually happened and it’s not just thinking about happening, here’s another song that’s truly about what it felt like,'” Katz says.
The emotion of “Paws” has still connected strongly with fans, and Katz has heard many of their stories about their own pets. He’s noticed that listeners have reacted in similar ways to songs from throughout Badflower’s career.
“Comments sections on the YouTube videos are always my favorite ’cause, on some of the older stuff especially, people just share their stories, and that’s such a cool thing,” Katz says.
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