23 - Tuesday White Nights

Single Review

By Silva Shahini

“I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults end up forgetting” – Lorde

Within the past one hundred years, the period of time between childhood and stable ‘grownup’ adulthood has become a discreet era that society has displayed a keen interest in. The construction of categories such as the ‘young adult’ and the ‘teenager’ as we understand them today are both recent phenomena that have ultimately changed how we view the development of human life. The development of these categories has been impacted by their relationships to cultural, political, and commercial spaces. The interaction of these constructs with these factors has altered the human experience of aging. ‘23’ is an example of how these spaces impact the experience of aging to construct rhetoric and ideas that explore- and romanticise- the ‘coming of age’ period that lies between being young and old.

By exploring the simple experience of young people going out in their local area at night, ‘23’ captures the effervescence of youth by centring both the sound and the lyrics on the force of motion. The sense of motion goes beyond the narrator singing about wanting to physically “Jump the 23” bus but to the experience of moving through time, memory and through “places, places” as a person growing up. The announcement of the 23-bus leaving “stand 19”, the lyric “time flies, 100 miles to the rise” and the declaration of “let’s go back in the morning” creates this feeling of constantly moving through time and place, almost hungrily. This feeling seems to be commonly associated in popular culture with the lifestyle of young adults who ‘live in the moment’.

This lyrical intensity is built upon through the fast-paced, drum-heavy, raw production which builds up more energy and sharpens the lyrical focus on the small details throughout the song’s events. The experience of being young is caught between the shredding guitar and the dance floor percussion that you can feel thrumming through you. This building and releasing of tension in the production allows listeners to feel the thrill of the experience that is being sung about. The sound of ‘23’ allows listeners to enmesh themselves in the experience Tuesday White Nights are exploring by creating room for listeners to reminisce as they listen to the song, further imbuing in a romantic anticipatory nostalgia.

Even with the lyrical focus on experiencing the present, time seems to encroach on the narrator’s perspective. In fact, the lyrics’ awareness of the narrator moving through time and space are what make the song’s desire to focus on the present feel so much more urgent. This creates a slight bittersweet element which ends up lingering a little even after the song ends. The song’s intentional focus on ‘being in the moment’ and the cataloguing all the small details make ‘23’ feel like a scrapbook full of snapshots memorialising the ‘proof’ of a feeling that otherwise cannot be simply captured.

Time and motion are two forces that seem to mobilise how we experience memory. In ‘23’, these forces are filling the experience -to the brim- with this sense of hurdling both towards and away from something. The created sensory and emotional experience feels reflective of how we view teenagers and young adults as existing in this distant, sparkling, hazy in-between.

By exploring the band’s personal memories, ‘23’ is able to speak to this almost universal sense of exaltation that comes from experiencing the fleeting thrill of youth. This want to both be a part of and experience as much as possible feels key to the messaging of ‘23’ because this need highlights how sacred this type of youth has been made to feel. This feeling desire that runs through the song coupled with the subtle acknowledgment that these feelings and experiences will soon come to an end makes ‘23’ feel like an ode to this flash-in-the-pan kind of youth.

However, the Tuesday White Nights are not alone in creating media that feels like a love letter to this perception of young people. Young adulthood seems to be presented like this in many forms of cultural production. Cultural productions across film and television such as: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Skins, Before Sunrise, The OC all seem to revere the young. Within the musical space, songs like: ‘Forever Young’; ‘Long Live’; ‘Supercut’; ‘Ribs’; ‘A Place in this World’; ‘Change’; ‘California’; ‘Young, Dumb and Broke’ and ‘What’s My Age Again?’ seem to treat being a young adult like a solitary lighting strike. All these songs -much like ‘23’- also lean into the feeling of realising that -this- specific moment in time will not and cannot be experienced or captured again and therefore must be celebrated as much as possible now.

‘23’ as a song does more than just speak to how parts of society culturally romanticise the experience of being a teenager or a young adult across media. ‘23’ is part of a larger conversation of how we as people are growing up, within and through these age-based constructions that are classifying, categorising, and shaping how we are experiencing time, memory, and motion throughout our lives.

Want more from Tuesday White Nights?

Instagram | Spotify