SONG: “Young and Stupid”.
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: The Guardian, 3 February 2020, “Girls beginning puberty almost a year earlier than in 1970s,” as used in the post “Girls really are growing up quicker – biologically speaking.”
ABSTRACT: I couldn’t resist writing a pop song (maybe the most sex-focused of modes of art) about what amounts to nostalgia for sexlessness. If I say “presexuality” that sounds all Lolita-ish and gross, and is not what I mean. The image I got, thinking about this science story, was of going to the beach with my little sister and the girl who lived down the street when I was younger than 12, younger than 10, young enough that tops on girls’ swimsuits were really kind of notional or wishful thinking, young enough that parents would chase us all into one shower together to get the sand off. And that was fine.
Are these lyrics romanticizing childhood? Yep, you bet. But I hope they’re doing the opposite of sexualizing it, which is what most pop songs seem to do, and now what something in our environment is doing, too.
So, somehow, I wrote a song about – or at least inspired by – premature thelarche, and I managed to do it without once mentioning boobies. As a profoundly childish and inappropriate man, I feel I should get some credit for that. There’s also that old pop cliche of staying “forever young” or thinking the summer that would “last forever,” when in fact every kid knows that ain’t so, and that somehow you are going to turn into one of them, those grown-ups, and start worrying about weird stuff and doing strange things that are somehow really important even though they seem kind of stupid. So this is, in part, a way of pushing against that.
As far as recording and production goes, this song was done just about entirely within 48 hours. Three chords – well, four, counting the bridge. I was thinking about how Yo La Tengo might have written “Nowhere Near,” then backed away from that a smidge. If I had the baritone of the lead singer of The National, I think it’d suit this song well. Drank plenty of water, recorded vox in an empty house, and tinkered a little with some mastering effects – especially a free VST called “Limiter No. 6” – to get things to sit right.
I’m kind of scared that there’s another song (or a dozen) named “Young and Stupid” out there that I’ve heard and forgotten, but decided I really didn’t want to know and just went ahead and did this.
It came together well.
LYRICS:
V1:
The beach in late July, shovels in the sand
We played like sisters holding hands
CH:
When we were young
We knew it wouldn’t last
We saw our future
Would wash away our past
We were young and stupid
But we were rightV2:
Let the ocean cool the sun away
No fears of changing schools todayCH:
When we were young
We knew it wouldn’t last
We saw our future
Would wash away our past
We were young and stupid
But we were rightV3:
Covered head to toe and all points in between
We shared the shower to get cleanCH:
When we were young
We knew it wouldn’t last
We saw our future
Would wash away the past
We were young and stupid
But we were rightBR:
…Time blinds us from behind us, so mature
Kids get older than they were
CH:
When we were young
We knew it wouldn’t last
We saw our future
Would wash away our past
We were young and stupid
But we were rightWe were young and stupid
But we had time to be
Young and stupid
But we had time to be
Young and stupid
And we had time.
We had time.