At first I thought this was about orphaned children, but on further consideration, it seems more a post-punk anthem about orphans of a generation. "It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten" really parallels to the Replacements attitude of almost boasting about being semi-dropouts and fuck-ups. The sing-a-long beer-in-hand chorus really reenforces that impression that it's okay to be a generation without a future or purpose.
Written before the term "Generation X" caught on, I always thought the line was "ya got no wars to name us", as there were no wars from Vietnam to Desert Storm.
"Young...take it, it's yours..." is a sort of punk reiterance, updated for 1985, "it" being the future, whereas, in 1977, the cry was "no future". Or maybe Westerberg was saying "we're not using it, you can have it".
Under pressure from their label, they reluctantly made a video for Bastards of Young - an unedited shot of a speaker playing the song. Perfect negation for the new video age they so despised.
This song is also one of the many examples of Westerberg's songwriting techniques of making sure the intro and outros of his songs were jarring or at least interesting from the rest of the song, in order for the listener to take notice. I'm constantly amazed how this is done time and again without sounding tacked on in the slightest.
At first I thought this was about orphaned children, but on further consideration, it seems more a post-punk anthem about orphans of a generation. "It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten" really parallels to the Replacements attitude of almost boasting about being semi-dropouts and fuck-ups. The sing-a-long beer-in-hand chorus really reenforces that impression that it's okay to be a generation without a future or purpose. Written before the term "Generation X" caught on, I always thought the line was "ya got no wars to name us", as there were no wars from Vietnam to Desert Storm.
"Young...take it, it's yours..." is a sort of punk reiterance, updated for 1985, "it" being the future, whereas, in 1977, the cry was "no future". Or maybe Westerberg was saying "we're not using it, you can have it".
Under pressure from their label, they reluctantly made a video for Bastards of Young - an unedited shot of a speaker playing the song. Perfect negation for the new video age they so despised.
This song is also one of the many examples of Westerberg's songwriting techniques of making sure the intro and outros of his songs were jarring or at least interesting from the rest of the song, in order for the listener to take notice. I'm constantly amazed how this is done time and again without sounding tacked on in the slightest.