Young Man's Game

Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold is not renowned for his sense of humor but on this Shore track he pokes fun at some of his past quirks and hang-ups. I could worry through each night Find something unique to say I could pass as erudite But it's a young man's game Pecknold admitted to American Songwriter that on Helplessness Blues (2011) and Crack-Up (2017) he was self-conscious about ensuring every song had to be serious, but on Shore he allowed his wry sense of humor to come to the surface. "It felt almost like a kind of therapeutic exercise to let a song be silly," he said. "And to have the lyrics touch on why. Thinking of that kind of self-consciousness as a young man's game and maybe it's OK to just let your hair down and let a song have some humor. You can still be a serious artist if you're making something funny."

Pecknold told EW the cheery, upbeat song is about leaving some of his old insecurities and delusions behind. "I used to be afraid of losing my youth and people would always say it's a young man's game to bemoan that, so I was trying to reframe that for myself," he explained. "When you're 20, in addition to having all the energy in the world, you're also lazy and insecure and confused. And my younger self would have been too self-conscious to make a song that's trying to be funny in any way. So I'm happy that the song that's a bit jaunty musically also had the lyrics about that same kind of thing."

Pecknold references Arthur Lee, the frontman of the '60s psychedelic and folk-rock band Love. I could dress as Arthur Lee Scrape my shoes the right way Pecknold explained the lyric to Mojo magazine: "I remember thinking that Arthur Lee was the coolest guy in the world. I tried to mimic him for a while, but it is strange to carry that kind of mimicry into adulthood."