Music Videos: Glass Animals: “Youth”

Self-tutoring about messages of songs and videos: the tutor mentions one.

Glass Animals “Youth” seems, to me, to be about a girl who gives her child – her “boy” – up for adoption. She does so because she feels she can’t offer him the life he deserves. She says, “I was gone but not my love.”

From then on, all the girl thinks about is the boy she gave up. She struggles, in her own head, to explain it to him, as if he can hear her. She regrets, constantly, that she isn’t with him. Yet, she hopes earnestly that it will all make sense – that one day, in spite of everything, she will make him “fly.”

“Youth” is a catchy song which I learned from my son, who would listen to it while playing chess online. I knew there was more to it than a bouncy, cool vibe. When I saw the video, though, it put me in tears.

Throughout the video, the girl watches her son. He’s easy to find at first, but more difficult as time passes. Neither ever changes: she is always the age at which she gave him up (perhaps), while he appears as a boy of five or six every time she finds him. Later, he must be a young man – she finds his car, for instance, and his motel room – but to her, he yet appears six years old. She can’t move past the age she last knew him.

The video is so believable, it’s scary to watch: you relive, each time, the heartbreak of the mother, and wonder, as well, if the son ever gets over being given up. Maybe they will make a song about the same situation, from the son’s point of view. I’m sure it, too, would be a great song, but likely heartbreaking as well: Glass Animals can really put you into the situation.

Source:

Glass Animals – Youth(Official Video) -YouTube