The Meaning of "That's How People Grow Up"
- Thread starter Eddy
- Start date
Sharron Needles
Rank
Where are you going?
Well I Wonder
Now, Today, Tomorrow.....
I think its about learning from our experiences. In this case a painful one. Its a kind of "Eat yer Brussel Sprouts! They'll put hairs on yer chest!" type of message.
D
Dave
Guest
he had a car crash and broke his spine. he couldn't record for seven years while he recovered.
jeniphir
Doing Very Well
You have to go through some ugly shit to, y'know, grow up. And c'est la vie. My own lyric for this song would have references like:
I was working in vintage clothing shop
and my friend got hooked on smack
everyone around me was too stupid to help her
and now she's lost--likely forever
but that's how people grow up
How about you?
--jeniphir
I was working in vintage clothing shop
and my friend got hooked on smack
everyone around me was too stupid to help her
and now she's lost--likely forever
but that's how people grow up
How about you?
--jeniphir
dizzywhore_1804
A big-nose who knows...
I am very sorry to hear about this xx
Skinner
RIP The Rev
Not a great way to grow up Jeniphir; I'm sorry.I think that there are certain things he wanted to say are needed to make you grow up and stronger. Countless people should really pay attention to the line "...there are things worse in life then never being somebody's sweetie". I think this is 100% true. So many people can't get past break ups etc, and throw themselves back into bad relationships, or rush into new ones in order to avoid being alone. (Not that I have room to talk...
)I think Moz was right to address this because it does make you a stronger person and in that, a grown up.
Bluebirds
Well-Known Member
I can't really see whats too disappointing about first class flights, nice hotels, millions in the bank, thousands adoring your every whim and politically incorrect nuances etc
Ok the court case and the break-up of The Smiths and being pilloried by the NME are things which may be a little troublesome but I bet you Morrissey doesn't get up in the mornings freezing and its still dark, goes out to work, finishes work and its dark again!! All compounded by the smoking ban!! I wonder if he does his own Xmas shopping?
Ok the court case and the break-up of The Smiths and being pilloried by the NME are things which may be a little troublesome but I bet you Morrissey doesn't get up in the mornings freezing and its still dark, goes out to work, finishes work and its dark again!! All compounded by the smoking ban!! I wonder if he does his own Xmas shopping?
Morrissey is a disaffected smoker.
The other day you posted that Morrissey was partly anti-semite and now disaffected smoker?
Can you elaborate your statement with evidence/proof please?
junkpile
Junior Member
"Disappointment" could be a name for a certain part of his lover's anatomy (the "booted" is especially telling), and the "growing up," well, you figure it out. Just an alternate reading, since you seem desperate for one, and that's the one that suddenly sprang to mind.
Vauxhall95
I Know It's Over...
I think when you are young you long for love desperately. I know for me it was all I could think about. Somehow, I wasn't complete if I couldn't find love. Then over time, as one grows older, you become more comfortable with your life (solitary or otherwise), and I think that it brings a level of serenity. Instead of still being on the flesh rampage, there is a level of recognition there is more to life than being someone's sweetie. Convention can be denied, and one can lead a complete life without the stereotypical wife, two point five kids, and a home in the suburbs. For me, the song makes me reflect on Morrissey just being content in his own skin.
That's all I got chief...
Raymond J Marks
Fly
faroffplaces
How I feel in my mind
What can one do? The lyric and the sentiment are themselves quite banal.
Of course its real problem is that it's not banal, but inane; the quality of art is not measured by how many times it's been done. I may still change my mind again about "That's How People..." (my friend's line on it is that it's deliberately "anti-romantic," which I have, at various points, sort of bought) but mostly I find it's not anti-romantic so much as anti-poetry - and once you're coining the phrase "anti-poetry" then where are you? What's the difference between anti-poetry and bad poetry?
(Actually, I know this one: it's "Dear God Please Help Me" vs. "That's How People Grow Up.")
I like your comparison with "by Friday, life has killed me" because it's a fine example of Morrissey actually nailing this aspect of midlife disappointment. Then again, Iperhaps that wasn't what he was going for with "People Grow Up;" perhaps this one was meant to be about epiphany rather than years of wearing-down.
And most of Morrissey's epiphanies can seem banal because, like many artists, his self-reflective inner world is incredibly well-defined but he doesn't seem to get the particulars of "normal" life that well. Thus a quite simple realization like "oh my - so you're telling me people become mature by realizing that their own suffering is only a part of the world's suffering?" comes rather late and sketchily (in the sense that it's an actual sketch). It's valid, but it comes from an unusual system of values and thoughts which understands music and old television much more easily.
(That's the problem with most mainstream Moz criticism - it assumes he's a normal man with an interest in loneliness, old television, music journalism, dead movie stars and the New York Dolls. This isn't true. Morrissey is loneliness, old television, music journalism, dead movie stars and the New York Dolls - a reductive statement, but you know what I mean. His brain's natural channels of thought are extinct popular culture and its own pain and amusement. To say anything about anything larger or more current is a struggle, even if it's one which we've seen him win a number of times, and indeed which he's made one of the major points of his artistic life. All this is a guess, but I think there's at least some truth in what I say.)
The other thing about a realization like "that's how people grow up" is that it's really easy to grasp intellectually but really hard to fully understand, especially if you're a self-reflective thinker, as above. I think the song is an effort to understand. Also, Morrissey is, I think, facing an uphill battle these past few years - "I fear I'll be lonely all my life" is simply easier to express artistically than the impression I've had from his last 20 or 30 lyrics - i.e. "I HAVE been lonely all my life; relationships have failed and I've found that simply growing older is not even a guaranteed route to wisdom." How do you cram that into a metaphor about being seasick?
Ultimately, my opinion of the song still comes down to "fabulous singing, killer hook, obviously painfully heartfelt, not that good goddamn lyric." It's simple, but it isn't "good simple" in the manner of "You Have Killed Me" or "Life is a Pigsty." I firmly believe that a non-fan would find it rather self-indulgent and both obvious and incomprehensable; you have to love Morrissey a bit to see anything in it - of course people said that of Ringleader too, and Ringleader was my first Moz album and made me understand what he was talking about immediately. Perhaps I should just say you ought to be the sort of person who's predisposed to love Morrissey a bit.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's phoned-in - like "Dagenham Dave" and "Christian Dior," it slots into a part of his aesthetic, whatever its other flaws. (He has phoned it in before, but at least the rage and sorrow of "People Grow Up" disqualifies it firmly from that category.)
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