If you’ve been watching the news for the past 6 months without anyone around to reassure you to the contrary, no one could blame you for thinking that America is having an identity crisis. If you take two people from opposite ends of the political spectrum and ask them what it means to be American, you'd probably get a wild range of replies. As I sat down to write this post, I was hard-pressed to think of a topic that hasn’t been polarized to death. Every news outlet is seen as having strong bias one way or the other. Individual journalists are held up as heroes or villains depending on individual political leanings. Films, books, and serials are picked apart for any portrayals or suggestions (overt or implied) that have the slightest morsels of political charge.

If your head hurts contemplating all of this, you aren’t alone. To me, it’s all American: the people who have opinions that turn my stomach are allowed to hold those opinions, and they’re allowed to be vocal about them. I can’t stand Ann Coulter, but she should’ve been allowed to speak at UC Berkeley without the threat of violence. By the same logic, Colin Kaepernick should be able to take a knee during the national anthem at a football game. Neither side has a monopoly on patriotism- you’re entitled to your opinions, and I’m entitled to mine. We’re both entitled to express our beliefs at the top of our lungs, even if we’re offending each other in the process. That’s the whole point, folks. In many ways, it’s all we’ve got.

Heated arguments over things we all have no control over are the perfect distractions. If we’re busy fighting on Twitter about Colin Kaepernick or Milo Yiannopoulos, we’re losing sight of the fact that most of us have the same aches and pains. Unless you’re very lucky, you probably do something that isn’t a labor of love for at least 8 hours every weekday. You probably spend way too much time sitting in traffic, or waiting on public transportation. You’ve probably got bills to pay, and they’re probably at least in striking distance of overrunning you. If you’re part of my generation, you’re probably buried under a mountain of student loans. Buying a house and getting married, former staples of the American dream, might seem like foreign concepts if you’re struggling to get by.

If you ever have time to sit and think about things like this, it can turn pretty dark, pretty quickly. I often wonder whether I’ll ever “climb the ladder” and live the way I want (my dream is to not have a boss). I wonder whether the mistakes I’ve made have already buried me, or if I’m still young enough to make something out of this. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to contribute something to change the problems I think I see in the world. I wonder what it means to be American in 2017. I wonder if I’ll go on wondering so long that life will pass me by.

I don’t have any of those answers. I don’t think anyone does. Sometimes it feels good just to try and wrap my brain around it. It feels good to be honest with myself and acknowledge that we’re all pushing our own boulder up a hill. That’s why Young Americans hits home for me.

Staying true to the rules of this series, I haven’t looked up how much time Bowie spent in the US before writing this album. I don’t know much about its origins other than that, genre-wise, Young Americans is supposed to be “Philadelphia Soul” (iTunes has no spoiler warnings). All I can say with confidence is that, despite the album’s age, it speaks to the struggle of growing up in the states when you come from nothing.

The titular track tells the story of a young couple who get married and quickly face an existential crisis:

“They pulled in just behind the bridge

He lays her down, he frowns

Gee my life's a funny thing, am I Still too young?

He kissed her then and there

She took his ring, took his babies

It took him minutes, took her nowhere

Heaven knows, she'd have taken anything…”

The song speaks to two concepts- one, overt in the narrative of Young Americans, is people following a script that they believe will lead them to a comfortable, happy life. Marriage isn't a bad example of that- ever seen someone make a major life decision as though they were reading from a manual? The idea that there's any kind of script or instruction manual in life is self-defeating. There are no guarantees, but we've all seen people act on conventions, expecting life to work itself out as long as they follow instructions. When that doesn’t happen, people panic:

“All the way from Washington

Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor

We live for just these twenty years

Do we have to die for the fifty more?”

Another huge theme in this track is that, all around us at any given moment, there are a thousand small dramas playing out as people struggle with day-to-day life and maintaining relationships. It reminds me of one of my favorite Springsteen songs (Jungleland). If our own lives are self-contained narratives with their own highs and lows, then the same can be said for everyone else. That’s a hard realization to act on, since we feel our own frustrations and our own needs first and foremost.

The icing on the cake with the opening track is that Bowie poses a handful of uncomfortable questions that don’t have good answers:

"Where have all Papa's heroes gone?"

“Do you remember, your President Nixon?

Do you remember, the bills you have to pay?

Or even yesterday?”

“Ain't that close to love?

Well, ain't that poster love?”

“Ain't there a man who can say no more?

And, ain't there a woman I can Sock on the jaw?

And, ain't there a child I can hold without judging?

Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?

Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?

Ain't there one damn song that can make me Break down and cry?”

Each of these questions is important in its own right. Bowie is speaking to how, when times are hard, the whole concept of the American dream can feel hollow. When your own struggle seems futile, the whole idea of working hard and finding a better lot in life doesn’t resonate the same way it used to. The line about Nixon, for me, is a commentary on our forgetfulness when it comes to public officials. We assume that “our guy” is clean, and we often fail to hold our own “side” accountable for the same behavior we protest when someone from the other "side" takes identical action.

This song is about all the little contradictions that come and go while we grapple with the idea of being American while we’re still young enough to imagine how things might be better. The chorus brings everything full circle with a reminder that, at some point, we leave all of these questions aside and chase after our best guess of what we want.

Oh, before I forget- that saxophone aint’ half-bad, either.

Standout Track: “Win”

“Win” is another hugely relevant piece for our time. We’re bashed over the head with the idea of “winning,” so much so that people love to invent competition and conflict where neither needs to exist. Politics is treated like a sport by the media, so it’s no surprise that many people are willing to overlook everything as long as their “team” wins. We idolize winning to the extent that we’re incapable of being honest when things aren’t working out.

The idolization of winning isn’t uniquely American, but boy do we try to take ownership of it. I’ll be the first to admit that I get sucked in- I’m nursing a functional video game addiction that exists solely because video games are a quick, mindless way to activate the reward center in my brain. I get that quick hit of winning a competition, even though in the grand scheme of things it does nothing for me. I’d be better served by piling up rejection slips from publishers and getting turned down for writing gigs, because I could learn and grow from those experiences.

It’s hard to contemplate questions without answers, ala “Young Americans,” so I think many people retreat to a single-minded approach to life. If all you have to think about is winning, life becomes much simpler. It gets to a point where people will keep pushing, even if their pursuit becomes a joyless experience:

“Now your smile is spreading thin (seek and believe in you)

Seems you’re trying not to lose (it ain’t over, no no)

Since I’m not supposed to grin (that’s all you got to do)

All you’ve got to do is win (it ain’t over, no, oh)”

One last note about “Win”: I love the juxtaposition of Bowie’s commentary on what he sees (”your smile is spreading thin”) versus what the self-help aisle tells him to think (”All you’ve got to do is win!”).

Standout Track: Who Can I Be Now?

I feel that, thematically, this would’ve been the “right” way to close the album. It feels like the end of the road, at least for the time being. When we’ve tried everything else and nothing works out, we’re supposed to pivot. This plays out in real life in a number of ways- maybe someone loses a job after 20 years and has to drastically alter their career path. As an example of that, you often hear about “re-training” people from dying industries. How easy is that kind of self-reinvention, though? I’ve never had to go through it, so I won’t pretend to understand, but I think that’s what Bowie is trying to speak to in this track.

“Who Can I Be Now?” feels like a question that isn’t for young Americans. It seems like a song we’d hear when we’re firmly aware that we are no longer young, but we still don’t have the answers we thought we’d have by now. Instead of answering the question “Who can I be now?” Bowie points out that we can feel comfort in the fact that everyone is experiencing the same frustration. All of our agreements and disagreements aside, we only have each other to lean on when Plan A fails and we’re left asking “what now?”

Standout Track: It’s Gonna Be Me

Personal feelings about bringing the album full circle aside, I’m not complaining about the closing track. It’s a powerful take on surrendering to someone in a sea of confusion and angst. We’ve all seen that movie- someone who sleeps around and swears off the concept of falling in love suddenly runs into the right person and everything changes. The difference with this track is that, for me, it’s a more honest expression of what that feels like. If you’re dealing with all the day-to-day struggles we’ve already discussed, the “grind” of being a working, commuting young American can wear you down to the point where falling in love with someone sounds like a pyramid scheme. I don’t think that transition comes easily. It wouldn’t be so easy to settle down and make yourself vulnerable after years of trial and error. Still, by the time the last verse rolls around, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

“I want to race down her street

And knock hard

Hard, hard on the door until

Until she breaks down into my arms like a

Treasured toy and I feel her pain

I’ll be so strong, again and again”

It’s a bittersweet message- the struggle might be worth it if things work out, but if anyone is gonna get hurt this time, it’s gonna be me.

Closing Thoughts

This post was meant to cover two albums (Station to Station is up next), but once I started diving into the messages in the opening track and their relevance today, I quickly realized that I’d end up rambling enough to dedicate the whole post to Young Americans. I first listened to this album last Summer, but held off on writing about it as I moved across the country, among other distractions. Since then, I’ve had these tracks in mind constantly as events unfolded during election season and, since then, as we’ve tried to collectively understand how to move forward.

I went on so long about the standout tracks that it might seem as though I didn’t like the others, but I loved the whole album. "Fame" is a nice break musically (it's more funk than soul), and I think it has something intelligent to say about celebrity worship. The cycle of building people up in our heads, then turning on them when that bloated image turns out to be false (we’re all human, but man do we forget it), existed long before the internet kicked the cycle into overdrive.

“Across the Universe” is a solid entry into the collection of Bowie’s ballads. “Somebody Up There Likes Me” is an interesting take on how we attribute successes and failures to things other than ourselves. It’s also a clever message about the contradictions of “self-made” people who had a ton of external support propping them up along the way.

I tried to stray away from musical and structural commentary this time, because there isn’t nearly as much diversity from track-to-track as I’ve noticed in Bowie’s other albums up to this point. The saxophone features heavily, along with the keyboard and bass guitar. With the exception of “Across the Universe,” the featured instruments don’t really change. The album as a whole is a clear break from anything Bowie has done up to now, but the usual intra-album variety is absent.

I’ve been listening to a ton of Kendrick Lamar lately, and one of the lines from a conversation at the end of To Pimp a Butterfly stood out while I was trying to wrap my head around Young Americans. In the midst of a discussion on race and class divisions in present-day America, Kendrick notes that “the only hope that we kinda have left is music and vibrations…a lot of people don’t understand how important it is.” I think that’s been true for a long time now. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race that we don’t see beyond protecting ourselves and our own interests, but we have to be bigger than that to progress as a society.

Young Americans is a vision of growing up in the states that emphasizes a shared struggle. It’s music that reminds us how much we have in common, and how important it is not to lose sight of each other. It isn’t worth having your “team” win if that “success” comes at someone else’s expense. I’ve often rambled about David Bowie having foresight in his music and lyrics, and this album is another timely example.