"When I Grow Up," The Beach Boys (1964)
An aching song pretending to be surf rock
Peak: #9 on the Hot 100
Streams: 4.7 million
A few days after Brian Wilson died on June 11, I treated myself to dozens of Beach Boys songs. I was wowed yet again by Wilson’s titanic gifts — how his tunes are both accessible and complex. You can mindlessly dance to a record like “Barbara Ann,” or you can spend hours parsing the harmonies, handclaps, and tambourines. You win either way.
Even in their nuanced catalogue, however, “When I Grow Up (To Be Man)” demands special attention. It’s a toe-tapping bop that also might break your heart.
Aurally, the song is a perfect companion for “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “I Get Around,” the carefree Beach Boys singles that immediately preceded it. It’s got a laconic, mid-tempo shuffle and a wall of beautiful harmonies that demand slow dancing on the beach. And even though it’s only two minutes long, it’s dynamic. There are legitimate musical movements in there, punctuated by drums and choral voices. It’s exciting to hear a song with so much life.
The lyrics, though, are about death. “When I Grow Up” is sung by a young man anxiously considering adulthood. He’s worried he won’t like the same things in women that her currently likes in girls. He’s worried he’ll lose his sense of humor. Most of all, he’s worried he’ll have regrets — that he’ll look back on his life and wish he hadn’t done what he did.
Even if this kid isn’t dying, his youth certainly is.
That’s melancholy enough, and then come the background singers. In the first verse, they’re just harmonizing with this fellow, letting him work out his thoughts. But beginning in the second verse, they taunt him. As he lists his concerns, they sing “14, 15, 16, 17.” They’re singing all the years that will pass him by.
They never stop. By the end of the track, the sinister choir is all the way up to 32, practically pushing the lead singer into middle age. No wonder his final lines are “It’s kind of sad / won’t last forever.” They won’t let him forget it.
This is heavy! Hearing it as a 46 year-old man just compounds the emotional impact, I can assure you.
“When I Grow Up” arrived in the era of splatter platters — songs about teenagers dying in gruesome accidents — and adolescents have been croaking in movies and plays at least as far back as Romeo & Juliet. To me, though, The Beach Boys’ song is a more effective meditation on mortality because it’s not about a sudden, violent end. It’s about the awareness that “nothing gold can stay,” that everything inevitably disappears, no matter how much we cherish it. Not everyone dies in a heinous car crash or drinks poison after they find their lover in a tomb, but if we live long enough, we all experience this fading away. Emily Dickinson captured this universal truth in her poetry. The Breakfast Club put it in a teen drama. And there among his odes to surfing and T-birds, Brian Wilson conjured it in his music.
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