James Cadman (2014) Matilda – When I Grow Up with Lyrics [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96JDkI2tBhI [Accessed 3 March 2015].
A couple of weeks ago, as part of the writing team, myself and Ollie have worked on a scene utilising song lyrics from different eras that relate to growing up. The first song that was particularly inspiration for me was ‘When I Grow Up’ from Matilda the Musical. This song sums up what some children believe constitutes as an adult and it is a humorous way of showing their naivety. Lines like “when I grow up, I will be smart enough to answer all the questions that you need to know the answers to before you’re grown up” (Matilda the Musical, 2011) is a particular line that stood out as we were discussing that, as debatably “adults” ourselves, we are still continuously learning how to survive. Even our parents or “adults” who are older and wiser are learning new things constantly. This song then prompted the idea of interviewing children and finding out their views about what they think makes an adult. It would be conducted in an ethically correct environment with permission obtained from all of the relevant people. We feel that this would be an interesting, more fair and appropriate way of showing the views of children instead of trying to play a young person by using stereotypes.
Returning to the creation of the song lyric scene, we spent a few hours on the internet searching for other songs that contrasted to this one by looking at adulthood from the perspective of an adult. We found that most of these songs looked at adulthood in a negative light and the singers spoke frequently of wanting to go back to their youth. As briefly mentioned in my last blog post, the song “Never Grow Up” by Taylor Swift has played a part in our discussion as it is sang from the perspective of both the child and the adult. The child wants to grow up and ‘move out someday and call [her] own shots’ (Taylor Swift, 2010) but then when she has moved out she realised what she has lost by leaving her home and family behind and turns to her childhood nightlight for comfort. After we had collected a substantial amount of song lyrics, we had the idea of putting them into a particular order. We set it out like a conversation between a child and an adult with the child saying how much they wanted to grow up, be independent and do what they want, but then the adult voice contesting this by saying how they want to go back to a simpler time when they were younger and were free from responsibility.
The only problem we need to look further into is the issue of copyright. If this does prove a problem, we can swap it with another scene. It has been really useful in gaining inspiration and other ideas anyway so it certainly hasn’t been wasted.
That’s it on music for now but this will definitely not be the last time it is mentioned!
Hannah