“Young Folks” – Peter Bjorn and John
(Words/music: Peter Morén/Björn Yttling, available on Writer’s Block, Columbia 2007)
According to my iTunes library, I haven’t listened to “Young Folks” since September 2007. This isn’t entirely true, as iTunes records the last time that you finished listening to a song. So more accurately, I haven’t listened to the entire song in about a year and a half, according to iTunes (there’s a chance I’ve heard it elsewhere, but for argument’s sake I’ll believe my iTunes library). There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this – I got sick of the song.
For whatever reason – whether it’s marketing, or some natural human tendency to overindulge, or something else that I can’t think of at this late hour – we squeeze out every drop out of popular songs. It’s a sort of backhanded compliment – when a song approaches perfection (take “Hey Ya,” for example) and gains mass appeal, it’s everywhere. Sure, there are excellent songs that don’t become popular (even in smaller circles), and not every popular song is a future classic, but when these two elements converge, expect to hear a lot of this song. So in that sense, it’s a compliment that I got sick of “Young Folks.”
However, “Young Folks” became ubiquitous in a different way – it wasn’t a radio smash (although I’m pretty sure it had some crossover play). Instead, TV took hold of the whistle melody and used it on everything. It was hard to turn on a TV that summer without catching a bit of the melody in the background of a commercial or promo. I understand it – it’s a hell of a melody and the kind of hook that most songwriters would kill to have, however I’m sure that more people know it as an advertising jingle than as a pop song. Personally, I’m also a fan of the way that the synthesizers enter during the chorus as the bongo slaps rise up in the mix. It’s a nice moment that serves the chorus well, yet I’m as guilty as everyone else for waiting for the whistling to come back. Sure, the rest of the song works well, but I’d be lying if I said it would work without the whistling, and since I heard the whistling so many times for far too long, I overdosed on the best part of the song, turning what was once a considerable strength into a frightening reminder of watching too much TV late at night. Even now, if the song comes up on shuffle, I try to skip it before the whistling makes me think of another ABC commercial running during a SportsCenter repeat.
Ultimately, “Young Folks” is a fine pop song, and every pop gem that suffers fatigue eventually comes back around – “Hey Ya” took about a year after it peaked. Still, because we were overexposed to just one specific part of the song rather than the entire song, the recovery period will take a little longer. Hopefully, sometime early next decade I can enjoy “Young Folks” the way I did a couple years ago.
More on Peter Bjorn and John: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
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