You Are Young

Album: Strangeland (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • The song title first appeared in pianist Tim Rice-Oxley's head as he simultaneously lost and found himself among a huge crowd of music lovers at Glastonbury. It was the realization that "you're never too old to feel those moments of epiphany," he said.
  • Rice-Oxley discussed the song's lyrics on the band's website: "This is quite a philosophical song. I think more than anything it's a message to myself to try and stay young at heart. It definitely feels like a message to my daughter too, in places. And also from the beginning it always made me think of standing in a crowd at a festival, a huge mass of people united by a feeling of bliss and freedom, which are things that are most easily associated with being young - as you get older it gets harder to find that feeling, and I love the idea that music can lift us out of ourselves, make us forget our everyday troubles, make us feel young. I also think the line 'You've got to bring some good into this world' pretty much sums up my view of being a human being - I kind of feel that bringing some good into the world is about the best thing you can hope to do in life. I'd say it's the reason we make music."
  • According to Rice-Oxley, the four Keane members can, "remember very clearly a moment when we were rehearsing this song together." He added: "We had spent many hours chopping and changing the structure of the song, trying to make it snappier and less ponderous, and when we eventually felt we had something worth listening to we went into the control room to listen to what we had done. When it got to the 'outro' section after the breakdown there was a real feeling of energy and excitement in the room, of knowing we had created something a little bit magical. Those are the moments you live for as a band."

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