Teddy Swims’ “Growing Up is Getting Old” offers a poignant and deeply relatable reflection on the complexities and often disillusioning realities of aging. The song navigates the bittersweet territory between nostalgia for the past and the sometimes burdensome weight of the present, touching upon physical changes, mental anxieties, repetitive mistakes, and the stark awareness of mortality – both one’s own and that of loved ones. It paints a picture of feeling weary with the process of maturation, finding that life may lose some of its youthful magic along the way.
Featured on the emotionally candid album I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1.5), a project where Swims explores his personal struggles and journey towards self-acceptance, “Growing Up is Getting Old” balances this melancholy with a vital counterpoint: the enduring power of human connection. Amidst the anxieties of aging, the song finds a crucial anchor of hope and meaning in the eyes of a specific person, suggesting that this connection provides solace and perspective against the relentless march of time.
Decoding the Title: A Weary Paradox
The title, “Growing Up is Getting Old,” immediately establishes the song’s central theme through a clever turn of phrase. “Growing up” is typically associated with progress, milestones, and achieving maturity. However, the song pairs it with “getting old,” which often carries connotations of decline, weariness, and loss. This juxtaposition creates a sense of paradox and fatigue.
The title suggests that the process of maturing, with all its responsibilities and realities, has become tiresome, losing its appeal and feeling more like a burden than an achievement. It encapsulates the feeling of disillusionment that can accompany adulthood – the realization that growing up isn’t always the exciting adventure one might have imagined, but can instead feel repetitive, demanding, and emotionally draining. It perfectly sets the stage for a song that explores both the challenges and the potential comforts found within this phase of life.
“Growing Up is Getting Old” Lyrics Breakdown: Navigating Maturation
This section explores the song’s verses and chorus, detailing the specific anxieties and observations about aging presented, linking them thematically to the vulnerable context of the album.
Verse 1: The Physical and Mental Toll
The song opens with the titular lament, immediately followed by concrete examples of aging’s impact. The speaker notes physical changes, like no longer fitting into cherished clothing, a relatable symbol of the body changing over time and perhaps leaving a past self behind. This external observation is paired with internal struggles: sleepless nights filled with excessive thinking, suggesting anxiety or worry that plagues the speaker’s mind.
As a response to this mental and physical unease, the speaker mentions turning to substances like alcohol and marijuana as coping mechanisms. While Swims has openly discussed personal struggles in interviews related to the Therapy album’s themes, this line serves more broadly as a candid acknowledgment of common, albeit potentially unhealthy, ways people might deal with the anxieties and discomforts that can arise with age and introspection. This verse effectively grounds the abstract feeling of “getting old” in tangible experiences and relatable struggles.
Verse 2: Repeating History and Letting Go
The second verse delves into the feeling of being stuck in patterns, suggesting that personal growth doesn’t always mean outgrowing flaws. The speaker admits to repeating the same kinds of errors made in the past, specifically referencing events that occurred at a place called Jackson Lake. While Jackson Lake is a real location name, Swims hasn’t publicly detailed a specific personal connection to it for this song, so it likely serves as a symbolic marker – a place representing youthful indiscretions or significant past moments where lessons perhaps weren’t fully learned.
This verse also touches upon the changing nature of relationships over time, noting the experience of making friends and losing touch with others – another hallmark of the journey through adulthood. The repetition of the line “Growing up is getting old” here reinforces the sense of weariness associated with these ongoing cycles of mistakes and relational shifts, suggesting a frustration with the lack of linear progress often expected with maturity.
Chorus: Lost Magic and Found Solace
The chorus shifts to a more existential reflection on the passage of time and its perceived effects. The speaker expresses a lack of understanding about how time slips away and poses a poignant question about why life seems to lose its inherent “magic” as one gets older. This speaks to a common feeling of disillusionment, where the wonder and excitement of youth fade, replaced by routine or cynicism.
However, this melancholy observation is immediately countered by a profoundly important exception. The speaker reveals that this feeling of lost magic disappears when looking into the eyes of a specific, significant person. This connection becomes a vital source of meaning, wonder, and perhaps nostalgia for a more hopeful feeling. It suggests that while the broader world might feel duller with age, intimate relationships can retain or rekindle that essential spark, providing an anchor against existential drift.
Verse 3: Facing Parental Mortality
This verse brings the theme of aging into sharp focus by contemplating the mortality of the speaker’s parents. There’s a dawning realization that their time is limited, accompanied by a sense of regret or urgency about needing to spend more time with them before they are gone. This awareness isn’t presented as a sudden event, but rather something that becomes undeniable when observing the physical signs of aging in their parents, such as wrinkles.
This confrontation with parental aging serves as a stark reminder of the speaker’s own place in the life cycle and the finite nature of time. While rooted in a universal experience, this reflection gains weight within the context of the Therapy album’s exploration of deep personal feelings and Swims’ candid approach to songwriting. It adds another layer to the feeling that “growing up is getting old,” highlighting the emotional weight and sense of responsibility that comes with recognizing the vulnerability of loved ones.
Outro: The Enduring Silver Lining
The outro circles back to the source of hope introduced in the chorus. It explicitly names the positive element found in the significant person’s eyes as a “silver lining” – a metaphor for hope or comfort found amidst difficulty. The speaker acknowledges needing occasional reminders of this solace, suggesting that the feelings of disillusionment are pervasive but not all-consuming.
By repeating the core sentiment – that the feeling of magic or connection is still accessible through this specific person’s gaze – the song concludes on a note of tempered optimism. It doesn’t erase the anxieties about aging presented earlier, but it offers a powerful counterpoint: the enduring value of human connection as a buffer against the weariness of time and the fading magic of the world.
Metaphors and Symbols: Illustrating the Passage of Time
“Growing Up is Getting Old” uses relatable symbols and metaphors to convey the emotional landscape of aging and the search for meaning within it.
Growing Up is Getting Old (Title Phrase): The Central Paradox
The title itself functions as the primary conceptual metaphor (Lyrics: “Growing up is getting old”). It juxtaposes the expected positive trajectory of “growing up” with the often negative connotations of “getting old.” This paradox encapsulates the core emotion: the process of maturing feels less like achieving new heights and more like accumulating weariness, responsibilities, and disillusionment.
It symbolizes the loss of youthful energy or optimism and the onset of a more jaded or burdened perspective on life. It’s the realization that adulthood isn’t a finish line but an ongoing process that can feel taxing and repetitive, making the speaker feel prematurely “old” in spirit.
Favorite Clothes: Symbol of Physical Change and Past Selves
Mentioning the inability to fit into “favorite clothes” serves as a simple yet effective symbol for the physical changes that accompany aging. Favorite clothes often hold nostalgic value, representing a past time, a past version of oneself, or a period associated with certain feelings or experiences. Being unable to fit into them signifies not just physical transformation, but also the passage of time and the inability to return to that past self or era.
It’s a tangible reminder that time moves forward and changes the body, sometimes leaving behind cherished aspects of one’s identity or appearance, contributing to the overall feeling of life shifting in undesirable ways.
Jackson Lake: Marker of Past Mistakes or Youth
The reference to making the “same mistakes / Like I did at Jackson Lake” uses a specific place name to anchor the theme of repetitive behavior. While Swims hasn’t publicly clarified a personal connection, Jackson Lake likely symbolizes a specific time or place from the speaker’s past, presumably youth or early adulthood, associated with significant events or mistakes.
By referencing it, the speaker emphasizes that despite the passage of time implied by “growing up,” fundamental patterns or flaws may persist. It serves as a geographical marker for a past self whose errors still echo in the present, highlighting the frustrating, non-linear nature of personal growth and contributing to the weariness expressed in the song’s title.
Wrinkles Show: Tangible Sign of Mortality
Observing wrinkles on parents (Lyrics: “it hits me when the wrinkles show”) functions as a powerful, concrete symbol of aging and mortality. Wrinkles are undeniable physical markers of time passing. Seeing them on loved ones, particularly parents who often represent stability and permanence in one’s life, can be a jolting experience.
It transforms the abstract concept of aging and mortality into something visible and immediate. This symbol triggers the speaker’s awareness of their parents’ limited time and, by extension, their own mortality, adding significant emotional weight to the feeling that “growing up is getting old.” It represents the moment abstract anxieties about time become palpable realities.
Silver Lining / Eyes: Locus of Hope and Connection
Contrasting the general disillusionment is the recurring image of finding solace, magic, or a “silver lining” specifically when looking into someone’s “eyes” (Lyrics: “I still feel it when I look into your eyes” / “There’s a silver lining in your eyes”). The eyes here symbolize deep connection, intimacy, understanding, or perhaps a reflection of enduring love or hope. The “silver lining” explicitly frames this connection as a source of comfort amidst the surrounding “clouds” of aging and disillusionment.
This powerful symbol represents the resilience of human connection against the backdrop of life’s challenges. It suggests that while the external world or internal state may feel bleak, specific relationships can provide profound meaning, perspective, and a reminder of life’s enduring beauty or “magic.”
Aging and Anchors: The Story Within the Album
“Growing Up is Getting Old,” like the other tracks on Teddy Swims’ I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1.5), finds its deepest resonance within the album’s confessional framework. Produced by Two Fresh and Julian Bunetta, the song contributes to the project’s overarching narrative of navigating personal struggles and complex emotions. While Teddy Swims hasn’t pinpointed specific biographical events solely depicted in this song in available interviews, the themes it explores are deeply aligned with the journey he documents on the album.
Swims has spoken candidly about mental health, the pressures of life, and processing difficult experiences [Reference: Grammy.com, Today.com, Songwriting Magazine]. “Growing Up is Getting Old” taps into universal anxieties about aging, mortality, and disillusionment, filtering them through this lens of raw emotional honesty. The mentions of unhealthy coping mechanisms, the weight of realizing parents are aging, and the feeling of life losing its magic all fit within the album’s exploration of confronting difficult truths.
Crucially, the song’s ultimate turn towards finding hope in a specific relationship also aligns with the album’s exploration of love and loss as transformative experiences. It represents a moment of finding an anchor amidst the turbulent waters of maturation and self-discovery chronicled throughout the Therapy project.
Conclusion: Finding Light in the Lengthening Shadows
Teddy Swims’ “Growing Up is Getting Old” offers a moving and highly relatable meditation on the passage of time, the anxieties of aging, and the search for enduring meaning. As part of the deeply personal narrative of I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1.5), the song captures the often-weary feeling that comes with maturation – the physical changes, the mental burdens, the awareness of mortality, and the sense that life might be losing its youthful sparkle.
Yet, amidst this melancholic reflection, the song finds a powerful counterpoint. Through resonant symbols like the fading magic contrasted with the “silver lining” found in a loved one’s eyes, Swims emphasizes the profound solace and perspective that human connection can offer. It doesn’t shy away from the difficult aspects of getting older, but it ultimately suggests that finding anchors in relationships can make the journey bearable, even meaningful. The final thought is one of tempered hope: while growing up can indeed feel old and burdensome, moments of genuine connection can still illuminate the path forward.