Annotations for Elle mclemore lifeboat

Lyric: The tiniest lifeboat
Annotation:
Heather McNamara uses the lifeboat as a metaphor for the popular kids. As they get older and more desperate, the lifeboat gets tinier; e.g. the group of popular people shrinks. In elementary school, almost everyone is ‘cool’. In high school, it’s eat or be eaten.

Lyric: Full of people I know
Annotation:
Notice, she doesn’t say she was pushed off, she says “the weakest must go”. That alludes to the fact that she willing stepped off the lifeboat, or committed suicide (tried to, at least). She acknowledges herself as the weakest and wants out, and she thinks suicide is the only answer.

Lyric: [HEATHER MCNAMARA]
Annotation:
The song is written in ¾ time, with a guitar line that should maybe be written for 4/4 time. In each measure of the verses, the guitar pattern spills over into the next measure, as if there is not enough room for it in the previous bar — creating a musical image of Heather Mac’s struggle to stay in the tiny lifeboat. The time signature is particularly fitting because of the number of Heathers (three) and their new number after Veronica’s addition (four). Perhaps Mac feels that there is no longer room for her now that there is a fourth member. However, this detail is unlikely because the Heathers’ numbers returned to three long before this song, when Heather Chandler died.

Lyric: The tiniest lifeboat
Annotation:
The group of popular kids is tiny. It’s hard to get in and it’s hard to stay in. There’s not enough room for everyone.

Lyric: The tiniest lifeboat
Annotation:
In this song, the ‘lifeboat’ is used as a metaphor for popularity being the only way to survive in high school. Calling the lifeboat ‘tiny’ shows how only a few people can be popular and its a struggle to stay in that crowd.

Lyric: Cold, clammy, and crowded
Annotation:
Everyone wants to be popular. Everyone wants to be seen. So everyone is fighting over the part. People are “cold” to each other, because being popular at Westerberg seems to mean being cold and cruel to everyone. Heather M. sees that, and understands that she is in trouble.

Lyric: With people I know
Annotation:
I think it’s worth noting that McNamara calls the other popular kids people she knows instead of her friends. It shows how left out and alone she feels.

Lyric: Full of people I know
Annotation:
The switch from “With people I know” to “Full of people I know” shows how crowded the “lifeboat” has become. Heather M. no longer feels there is any space for her to be with the people she knows. She is no longer alongside them, but observing how many there are. Her disconnection highlights how scared of this isolation she is. Duke has taken over and decided to kick McNamara out of their clique. McNamara is in the ocean, lost in the sea of the uncool discards.

Lyric: I’m hugging my knees
Annotation:
Hugging your knees is one of the most vulnerable positions because it makes you shrink down to nothing. Heather M. throughout the entire musical has shrunken to fit somewhere in Westerberg. Hugging your knees is also a very protective position that tends to block out your surroundings. It’s isolating. It shows that Heather feels like she’s shrunken to nothing but loneliness and fear.  Holding your head down and hugging your knees is also used during a plane crash or other destructive event. McNamara knows something devastating will happen, and she’s bracing for impact, hoping no one will get hurt– though somebody always does.  Since hugging your knees makes one take up less space, it’s possible that McNamara is making room for others on the lifeboat because of her sympathetic nature.

Lyric: We’ll sink any minute, so someone must go
Annotation:
Heather M. references how unstable popularity feels. Considering that in the beginning, the Heathers seemed to be an unstoppable force, it is interesting that Heather sees it as so flimsy. Her chances of being “kicked out” highlights how high school feels so dangerous.

Lyric: Still, the weakest must go
Annotation:
This is the point where she ultimately accepts her fate. It’s a good thing Veronica helps her through everything in the following scene, or else she would have been successful with her suicide. H. McNamara realizes that she is the “weakest” and no longer has any place with Duke and her group. She accepts that she has nowhere to go from there and that H. Duke has ultimately ditched her.

Lyric: Storms are approaching, there’s nowhere to hide
Annotation:
With Heather Duke now as leader, Heather McNamara is now being thrown under the bus, looked down upon, and forced to live with it. This is the first time we see her actually standing up for herself.

Lyric: If I say the wrong thing, or I wear the wrong outfit
 They’ll throw me right over the side
Annotation:
Heather is talking about high school’s demanding social norms and stereotypes. Once you decide to be a popular girl, all eyes are on you. If you don’t dress and talk like everyone would expect you to, you’ll be thrown out of the way. Her fashion and speech are simply her safeguards from being tossed out of the group and being alone. She wishes to not be alone in the raging ocean of life and thus wears the “right” outfits and says the “right” things. The “wrong outfit” line may refer to the fact that in both the movie and the musical, the Heathers wear different colored versions of almost the exact same outfit every day at school. If you deviate even a tiny bit from the norm, you are at risk of becoming an outcast.

Lyric: The people smell desperate
Annotation:
Everyone’s trying to stay alive, stay hopeful, but as they get older it gets increasingly harder.

Lyric: Everyone’s pushing, everyone’s fighting
Annotation:
They are fighting over the place in the boat, a metaphor for how everyone is desperate to be popular and fighting over a place among the popular kids. It could also be literal, as there’s a bunch of fighting/pushing in this show. High school is mentally tolling, yes, but it can also get physically violent.

Lyric: I float in a boat in a raging black ocean
 Low in the water and nowhere to go
 The tiniest lifeboat with people I know
Annotation:
H. McNamara uses the lifeboat as a metaphor for the popular kids. As they get older and more desperate, the lifeboat gets tinier. The ocean may be a metaphor for depression or anxiety type, and even those who are “safe” (popular) are still at risk of being thrown in at any point. Notice how she says ‘with people I know’ as opposed to ‘full of people I know’ referencing that she has not been thrown off yet, but will be soon.

Lyric: And the captain is pointing
 Well, who made her captain?
Annotation:
This is a metaphor for how Heather Duke took Heather Chandler’s place as leader of the Heathers. No one expected the fragile, bulimic Duke to suddenly become so assertive. This is the angriest we ever see Heather McNamara, and the first and only time she shows that she doesn’t per se like the other Heathers.

