Shane -- you gotta have fear in your heart???

[Dogless & Loveless]

"You gotta have fear in your heart..."

So what in the hell does she mean by that?  Any idea?  Shane is obviously an anti-war song.  You gotta figure it's gotta be some commentary on the nature of  courage.

[wooden and alone]

i think it means like "watch your back"

it definitely has an anti war sentiment, or a kind of pre going to war sentiment. like this couple lays in bed or drives around town the day before the guy is being shipped to war. and the girl is saying "these people don't know our drama, they're just sleeping". i love this song. of course, the girly sound version makes it all different, like it suddenly becomes about dating with the last verses. maybe she meant to say war and dating are kind of similar.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Another bit of trivia, for those of you interested.  I believe I still have my draft card.  They were still requiring young men to get draft cards when I turned 18.  I submitted the paperwork and got the first one with the classification 1-H, which meant holding.  A few months later, I got another one which was 1-A.  They shut down the program before they sent me the next one, which should have taken me to 1-A.  The later people in my class (born '56) got the 1-H cards, but not the 1-A cards.

If they still had the draft, I have no doubt that I would have been sent over to Vietnam.

[FullyAssembled]

I thought "Shane" was talking about Shane Dubow Liz's college friend and ex-boyfriend who she mgiht have been with during the Girlysound Era when she wrote the song. Shane is a writer/journalist, so he must have "been doing a story" about what the general American public thought about the Gulf War. The "fear in your heart" line always struck me as a cautionary piece of advice that Liz gives to Shane - basically saying you can't just be this naive twenty-something going up to average Joes and spreading an idealistic anti-war platform and thinking that it's going to contribute anything to solving the worlds problems.

[harkrider]

I think you're on to something.

Fearless = naive

[LizExplainedItToMe]

FullyAssembled is right on.  This is definitely a commentary on war, but there is another key lyric, key because it precedes the very lyric in question.  "You looked like you were just a little kid...  Shane, I said, you've gotta watch your ass..."

Because of this stanza - my favorite in the Whip-Smart version - I've always felt this could be interpreted as a loss of innocence song, as well.  After all, children are fearless.  They fancy themselves invincible, and they see the world as it should be, rather than as it is.  Liz, I believe, is warning Shane that he is not invincible.  He is now vulnerable to the horrors of war, and will have to "watch his ass" at all times. 

I think the repetition in this song lends emphasis at the very least - it is eery.  Am I the only one who gets chills upon every listen?