FEATURE:
Groovelines
London Grammar – Wasting My Young Years
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I am thinking about London Grammar…
as their third studio album, The Greatest Love, is out soon. It comes eleven years after their remarkable debut album, If You Wait (2013). You can order The Greatest Love here or here. We have to wait until 13th September to get that album. A lot has changed in the past few years for Hannah Reid, Dan Rothman and Dominic ‘Dot’ Major. Reid has become a mother. The group’s inspirations have changed and expanded. I wonder how Hannah Reid feels about the trio’s greatest song – in my mind anyway. A song that deals with maybe some misspent youth and regrets, she is now a bit older and wiser. A new addition to her family. Their second single, Wasting My Young Years, followed Metal & Dust. Released in June 2013, Wasting My Young Years peaked at thirty-one in the U.K. It is an impressive chart position, though it was worthy of so much more. That debut album, If You Wait, was acclaimed. I don’t think that we had really heard anything quite like London Grammar. I am surprised that the album was not shortlisted for a Mercury Prize in 2014 - as it could have been in with a shot of winning. The songwriting throughout is incredible. Even though each of the trio has their strengths, it is depth and power of Hannah’s Reid’s vocals that really make every song go deep. Her lyrics too. On that 2013 debut, we get such maturity and impact from her words. Her stunning vocal range is something to behold! Perhaps the finest and purest distillation of her vocal wonder is on Wasting My Young Years. I think more people should talk about this song. As London Grammar have a new album coming along, I wanted to go back over eleven years to a very important time. A single that got a lot of praise. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews.
I would love for there more to be out there about Wasting My Young Years. Such is the potency of the song. How affecting it is. Testament to Hannah Reid’s songwriting – Wasting My Young Years, Interlude (live) and If You Wait are the other solo-written tracks on If You Wait -, I would love to see London Grammar live to see how this song sounds now. They have performed it live this year. The relationship with the track has shifted. The trio have grown and changed. Across the Ocean had their say on the song back in 2014:
“Cinematic in scope, ‘Wasting My Young Years’ serves a worthy successor to their breakthrough smash hit ‘Strong’ – a track now boasting in excess of 7 million views on YouTube.
Since receiving its first play on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show, ‘Wasting My Young Years’ has garnered strong support at UK radio not to mention more than 8 million plays online.
The track is taken from London Grammar’s #2 ARIA Chart debut album If You Wait – a release that saw the band awarded iTunes UK Album Of The Year and nominated for Best Breakthrough Artist at this year’s Brit Awards, as well as most recently taking home the converted Best Song Musically and Lyrically award for ‘Strong‘ at the Ivor Novello awards.
Their first trip to Australian shores culminated in a host of rave reviews from three SOLD OUT headline shows, whilst in the country for The Falls & Southbound Festivals; landing not one, but three coveted spots in triple j’s inaugural Hottest 100, including a Top 10 placing with ‘Strong’”.
I am going to wrap up soon. I remember when Wasting My Young Years came out. I was thirty at the time. It was quite an eye-opening song. I could relate to many of the lyrics. Hannah Reid was only twenty-two when the song was released. There is this mantra-like quality to the lyrics. Certain lines and phrases reiterated and repeated. My favourite section is: “Don't you know that it's only fear/I wouldn't worry, you have all your life/I've heard it takes some time to get it right/I'm wasting my young years/It doesn't matter if/I'm chasing old ideas/It doesn't matter…”. It can be interpreted as Hannah Reid being more general or oblique. You get the feeling that she is discussing maybe a slow start to a music career. Spending time not perusing her dreams or making some errors when it came to priorities. In September 2013, The Guardian interviewed London Grammar. There was a bit of context and explanation around Wasting My Young Years:
“The band met while at Nottingham University, where Reid and guitarist Dan Rothman drafted in Dot Major from the year below to add percussion (at their first gig as a three-piece, this involved him playing the djembe) to their sound. After just a handful of shows, they were signed to Ministry. The label, best known for its rave compilations, seems an unlikely fit but, says Reid, "the fact they were independent gave us a chance to go away, work on the songs and wait until we were ready."
The song that got them noticed – Wasting My Young Years – is a chilling look at the despondency of youth. Reid says it was written after a breakup and is about the pain of investing time in someone who squanders it. But at a time when young people feel entirely at sea – unable to find work or afford rents, forced back into their childhood homes – the song takes on a generational eeriness.
"I have a lot of friends now who are really lost," says Reid. "We got to go to university and have a good education, but we're finding ourselves in a position where it's impossible to get jobs, and we're terrified. So many people I know don't know what to do with their lives."
Though written mostly from experiences in Reid's personal life, If You Wait speaks to inauspicious beginnings of adulthood. It is often said that there are no angry young bands any more, but demoralisation rarely manifests itself in rage. In your 20s, anger gets taken out on your relationships and your self-esteem. This is a record that whispers with the pain of "a life that is cold" and being left "to the wayside, like you do". Perhaps it is the first quarter-life-crisis album.
For a group of middle-class kids such as these, finishing university and trying to make it as a pop band is a risky endeavour that almost always ends in failure and puts you years behind your peers. But the irony is, that London Grammar are neither the middle-of-the-road group they appear to be nor in the precarious state of youth they describe.
When most university graduates are staring into the unknown, being in this band might just have been the smartest move these three young people could have made. This is not just a record that speaks to mid-20s despondency, it offers a way out of it”.
I want to bring in a final review/feature about Wasting My Young Years. A song that still sounds utterly beautiful and affecting. Such an amazingly realised and confident song from a new group. Proof that Hannah Reid is among the most distinct voices – lyrical and vocal – of her generation. This is what CLASH said of Wasting My Young Years in May 2013:
“Youth is such a precious commodity.
Fragile, compact, limited to such a short time frame, youth has all the splendour, innocence and promise you care to mention.
Which is what makes London Grammar such an odd proposition. Formed at university, the band are still fresh out of their teens yet have become one of the most heavily dropped names in the music industry.
And their new single? 'Wasting My Young Years'. A beautifully executed piece of heartbroken pop music, this is languid, melancholic, anthemic in a way Lana Dey Rey can only dream of.
Yet for some reason, London Grammar still believe that they're wasting their young years… Strange”.
A song I was keen to explore for Groovelines, the atmospheric, epic and gorgeous Wasting My Young Years is, in my view, still the best thing London Grammar have recorded. Ahead of the release of the release of The Greatest Love – which one feels will include meditations on motherhood and fulfilment -, it is worth looking back at where it started. Hannah Reid pouring out her heart and veins in a moving song. There is still nothing out there…
QUITE like Wasting My Young Years.