sometime before the song was recorded in 1972, steven tyler wrote "dream on". mr tyler was born in 1948, so he would have been 24 years in '72, and younger than 24 when he wrote the song.
The past is gone... it went by like dusk to dawn.
paul mccartney's song "yesterday" was released in 1965. mr mcartney was born in 1942, so in 1965, he'd have been 23. the song bounced around a bit before its release, so one surmises he was younger than 23 when it was written.
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play. Now I need a place to hide away.
jackson browne, like mr tyler, was born in 1948, and he wrote the song "these days" in early 1965, when he'd have been 16.
These days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do, and all the times I had the chance to. Don't confront me with my failures -- I had not forgotten them.
barry gibb, born in 1946, along with his younger twin brothers robin and maurice (born in 1949) had written "i started a joke" in time to have it on an album in 1968, when he was 22 and they were 19.
I finally died, which started the whole world living.
the incredible thing about all this isn't purely the writing of songs. i mean, hell, taylor swift can churn out the songs, and she's, what, 12? 13? children write poetry and songs all the time. it's not that unusual.
what's unusual here is the depth of feeling, the empathy, the foresight expressed by teen boys and young men. i mean, there's the decline of civilization right there, in a nutshell: kids nowadays are about as deep as a mudpuddle on a sunny day.
even ms swift, who is undeniably prolific, only goes so far as to bad mouth her exes and deny her critics. i'm not saying standing up for oneself isn't worthy. of course it is. the thing is, though, why stop there? why not dig a bit deeper than the shallow grave in which society is attempting to bury your standing-up-ness alive?
i'll tell you why not - because it's a waste of time. there's nothing there.
back in the day, kids read books, talked to intergenerational families and neighbors, went to church.
no, i am not going to get started on church because there's a box of pandora worms if ever there was one. it's just that church is exemplary of a shared experience that encourages people to think outside themselves. school, also, used to encourage kids to see themselves as part of a whole, not as the entire self-contained whole. and, nothing says, "whole" like multiple generations of the family all under the same roof.
the problem is, we've gotten busy catering to the self-esteem of each individual child, telling each child how important they are, that we forgot to tell them that the other children matter, too.
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