Bastards of Young - 2008 Remaster

"Bastards Of Young" criticizes corporate America, modernity, and the Baby Boomer generation, all in one shot. It bears the oversimplified, melodramatic perspective one would expect from 26-year-old, perpetually disgruntled frontman, Paul Westerberg. Yet it also shows the subtle philosophical and emotional depth the Replacements are loved for.

The word "bastard" has multiple meanings. It can be a term for a despicable, unruly person. It's also a word for something that has been debased from its original form. Its original meaning was a person born to unwed parents, which used to be considered quite a terrible thing. It's unclear which meaning Westerberg is using in this song, and the ambiguity is amplified by the grammatically incoherent chorus: Wait on the sons of no one, bastards of young Now the daughters and the sons Outside of that, the song is direct and straightforward. God, what a mess, on the ladder of success Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten Here's the disdain of youth looking upon corporate America - a very '80s thing to do. The verse is about selling out, surrendering to the Establishment's anonymity machine. In 1985, American culture shamelessly celebrated the corporate world. It's become one of the decade's defining qualities in retrospect. Much '80s music criticized that celebration (as well as television, the mouthpiece of corporate America).

Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom Elvis in the ground, no way he'll be here tonight Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function It beats pickin' cotton or waitin' to be forgotten Here Westerberg takes us out of the universal distrust with which young men tend to see the world and gets specific. This song is targeted at the Baby Boomer generation. Boomers are generally defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, but the important distinction isn't dates so much as events. Boomers were those born to the generation that fought World War II. Elvis Presley was the primary celebrity hero for the Boomer generation. It's hard for later generations to really understand the level of stardom Presley held. He was, truly, on a level by himself.