If You Know The Movie

Magdalena Bay “Top Dog”

One of the most charming things about Magdalena Bay to me is that they love to write odd little jokes into “normal” sounding pop songs and then play it so straight that it’s easy to miss the joke entirely. They have their priorities straight – elegant songwriting first, subversive humor second. In the case of “Top Dog” the joke is a little tribute to film icon Laura Dern:

The joke can be as simple as noting that Laura Dern is the female lead in both Wild At Heart and Jurassic Park, but the funny part is more that in the context of the lines preceding the “girl in Jurassic Park” line are ambiguous enough to make you question whether she actually means Laura Dern’s character, the young girl Lex, or the “clever girl” velociraptor. Given Magdalena Bay’s history of writing literally predatory themes into pop music, it really could be the dinosaur.

Buy it from Bandcamp.