Youth Without Youth

---Excerpts from Emily and Jimmy's commentary on this song--- soundcloud.com/metric-band/youth-without-youth-commentary

Emily: It started as just one verse - a story, a very slow, sad story about the decaying social state through the eyes of a depraved child. The song developed into several verses, which captured the growth of this child, the evolution of this child into a teenager who goes from playing simple children’s games to smashing a window with a brick and getting arrested, and being in handcuffs. So it seems to be oddly timely with the general sense of malaise and discontent, so it's kind of one those songs that wrote itself.

Jimmy: We wanted to express some sort of form of anger and resentment, and the feeling of being pissed off because you don't get to experience the youth that maybe you should feel entitled to.

Emily: Sonically, we went for kind of a seventies sleaze. It’s always a good way to disguise any kind of political statement.

Jimmy: Or morose sadness.

Together, they advise to forget the rather cynical content of the song when listening to it and to "get into the seventies sleaze. The Gary glitter beat. Put on a tank top. Put some gel in your hair. Hit the town. Dance around. Have fun."

Gotta love these two. :)

So at first it seems as if they played hangman using a rubber soul (like a shoe) and a razor blade... this seems awkward. the Hangman refrain is repeated in every main verse.... and they are playing other games. there is no game called rubber soul that I have ever heard of or could find on google.

But my very first thought was, what if, in their childish innocence, tried playing the Beatles LP Rubber Soul with a razor blade, trying to mimic a record player's needle.

Can you imagine? That is the kind of secret children would keep, ruining a valuable album like that.

Double dutch is a game with two skip ropes and what you do is use 2 jump ropes and jump over both of them while you skip what it is meaning the to play double dutch with a hand grenade is reffering to the military.

playing blind mans bluff on the fire escape means to be a fireman

basically song means what its called youth with out youth

They won't ruin their careers by telling you what the song is about or they wrote it high and don't understand what their subconscious minds delivered. Most likely the latter.

The hangman is sung in a similar manner to "Anna Molly" by Incubus. Anna Molly or Anomaly?

Hangman, hey man or hymen?

"Hangman we played rubber soul with a razor blade"

Hangman is a coat hanger and an abortionist, the rubber soul is a condom and the blade is an allegory for murder and destroying one's rubber (relative morality) soul.

"It was a long joke till the punch line came."

A long joke is a penis, and then it came.

"Hangman we played double dutch with a hand grenade"

Once again the hangman is both an abortionist and a coat hanger.

Double dutch is not just a rope game. It is slang regarding using a condom and the pill at the same time to prevent pregnancy. The fact that they were using a hand grenade means there was no protection.

"They let us go but we lost one"

She lost a child as it got torn to pieces by a mass murdering hangman (abortionist/coat hanger).

"Can you read my mind?"

This song equates abortion with murder. Whether it was a conscious decision or drug influenced is unknown but the deeper meaning is in there.

For this song to be secretly equating abortion as murder is highly unlikely in my opinion because Emily Haines publicly supported charities that advocate the woman’s right to choose. “Rubber Soul” refers to the Beatles album, not a condom.

It’s about a group of depraved kids living in a decaying society. As they grow up, their twisted “games” begin causing harm to the rest of society. It also seems that through the years, one of their friends died as a result of their carelessness, or maybe police brutality (“they let us go but we lost one”). What the song is saying is that society’s nature is self-sustaining; the kids are influenced by the surrounding calamity, and eventually become the ones causing it, even for themselves. What this could mean in relation to the title is that we should all embrace the inner youthful optimism in ourselves more, because if we try to be muscle-heads, it might just rob children of their lives.

I take “Hangman” to mean they are telling this story as a sort of defense to someone judging them, like a sentencing hearing. Hangman being the title of someone who is prejudice from the get go and only looking to punish without empathy.

I agree “rubber soul” possibly Beatles reference. If I remember correctly, that album title came from the Stones as a sort of dig on their previous work maybe trying to be soulful without any real context behind it. I take this to mean as youth they were pushing their limits in the name of fun, until the games resulted in real consequences. Playing a rubber album with a razor blade; rubber is tough but the blade will cut eventually. Eventually you reap what you soul, if you are playing with life so callously it will catch up to you. Possible drug connotations, like people dabbling think it won’t catch up with them but it always does. Or possibly just the dumb things kids do for fun that would be criminal if older and caught.

The next verses similar motif but just escalating as the kids grow. Until “blind man’s bluff with the ninth brigade”. The angst sort of seams to be becoming more focused into legitimate protest, culminating at the very height into going directly against authority at the expense of being arrested and seeing loved ones perish.

The repetition of some of the games from the earlier verses seams to bring the whole story home, in that they are pleading for mercy from the hangman because they were youth deprived of opportunity and left to their own devices to find some of entertainment that the more privileged would associate with being young. I think of my youth how at times there was flirtation with rebellion and lawlessness, but being a bit more privileged provided more wholesome means to enjoy my childhood. Not everyone has that.