Boomerang

Song Background/Inspiration

You get laid off, replaced by a machine, and forgotten by the afternoon. Then, months later, the call comes - quietly, through the side door, with a better number attached - because the machine couldn't do what you did. Boomerang is sung from the chair of the person who was thrown away and came back, and it takes its name from the obvious physics: the thing you fling to be rid of has a way of arcing right back to your hand. The verses are cold and a little smug; the chorus swings on the simple inevitability of the return. Underneath the swagger is a sharper point - a company can rehire a person, but the hard-won knowledge that walked out with them does not always come back so easily.