Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun” is a coming of age song. It’s about the move out of security into a hostile and indifferent world. (Photo courtesy Fueled By Raman)
Paramore‘s song “Ain’t It Fun” is about a character-making moment. It’s a coming of age story — with an emotional realization at its core.
“Ain’t It Fun” is about a vulnerable phase. You’ve made the transition from being in a safe but unfulfilling place into a new space. But people are indifferent. And this new life isn’t what you thought it would be. Things aren’t happening.
You feel alone and no one seems to care. You’ve left something behind, but nothing new has come along yet. You’re in limbo. You can’t go back but you haven’t moved forward yet.
It’s a brutal spot to be in.
“You’re not the big fish in the pond no more/You are what they’re feeding on,” Paramore vocalist Hayley Williams sings. And she asks a painful question: “What are you gonna do when the world won’t open up to you?”
Reaching out to a post-meltdown generation
And she can be speaking for her generation. In a post-Wall Street meltdown globalized economy, the world isn’t opening up for so many young people. “Ain’t It Fun” is about a very personal situation of being vulnerable and disillusioned in an indifferent world. But it also reflects the immobilization of too many young people today who are paralyzed by lack of opportunity and recognizition.
We have a new hope. Hayley Williams and her band Paramore are a bright spot in the Top 40.
So where does that leave you? Out of Eden into an indifferent world. “Ain’t it fun living in the real world?/Ain’t it good being all alone?” Williams sings.
But there is a solution. Kind of.
The end of the song provides some advice — maybe with a touch of sarcasm — to just buck up and be strong:
“Don’t go crying to your mama cause you’re on your own in the real world,” Williams sings with a gospel choir. You’ve got to get tough to make it through this.
“Ain’t It Fun” has funk, R&B and gospel influences, which is a musical expansion for them. But the core emotions of the song are what Paramore has always been: punk rock. Which means looking at the world in an unflinching, honest and prophetic way.
As I’ve written about before on this site, the album this song comes from is the best of Paramore’s career. The range of musical styles and emotions is like the theme of this song — a coming of age. The band maintains their punk attitude and perspective and applies it to a range of musical genres — without selling out. It catapults them onto another level: a punk band that can expand and as a result dig in for the long haul.
Filling an all-important void
We’ve waited years for a female punk singer to inherit the energy, meaning and attitude that Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, and Debbie Harry had in the vintage punk era of the late 1970s and early 1980s. And I think Hayley Williams has taken on this role more than any female punk singer since that era.
Each month I listen to what’s on the charts. Sometimes there is so much crap in it makes me seriously doubt if any music can actually inspire people or be about anything but narcissism, consumerism and sexism. But occasionally something real like Paramore, Lorde, and Imagine Dragons sneaks onto the charts. And it shows that music can actually be an empowering counter force to narcissism.
Here’s the official music video for “Ain’t It Fun””
And here’s a great live version:
