AFTERIMAGE
Afterimage launched their first album in 1992 with their carrier single Next In Line. I thought that the song was utter crap as a musical composition ever since the first time I heard it. But because I'm probably not a reliable sample of my generation's mainstream culture, this pop-rock hit was apparently well-loved by hordes - it topped some charts as i recall.
The composer is a family friend of sorts (I wasn't completely honest about how i felt about his work of course). At that time that Next In Line was popular, I happened to have a chat with him (the face-to-face kind, not the online kind) about his song. He was in his early twenties then. He told me that his intent for writing it was to express the frustrations of young adulthood - the feeling of finally finishing your education and then getting on into what adults call "the real world", then having to live as an adult yourself whether or not (oftentimes not) you were ready or willing. Like you had to shed off your youthful idealism, put yourself in a box and toil for what you hoped would bring you closer to your dreams. He felt that frustration, he said, that his parents never prepared him (and probably never could have) for life, and before he knew it he was out there, next in line.
What has life to offer me
When i grow old?
What's there to look forward to beyond the biting cold?
'Coz they say it's difficult
Yes, stereotypical
You gotta be conventional,
You can't be so radical
So i sing this song to all of my age
For these are the questions we've got to face
For in this cycle that we call life
We are the ones who are next in line.
We are next in line
And we gotta work, we gotta feel,
let's open our eyes and do whatever it takes
And we gotta work, we gotta feel,
let's open our eyes
So i sing this song to all of my age
For these are the questions we've got to face
For in this cycle that we call life
We are the ones who are next in line.
When i grow old?
What's there to look forward to beyond the biting cold?
'Coz they say it's difficult
Yes, stereotypical
You gotta be conventional,
You can't be so radical
So i sing this song to all of my age
For these are the questions we've got to face
For in this cycle that we call life
We are the ones who are next in line.
We are next in line
And we gotta work, we gotta feel,
let's open our eyes and do whatever it takes
And we gotta work, we gotta feel,
let's open our eyes
So i sing this song to all of my age
For these are the questions we've got to face
For in this cycle that we call life
We are the ones who are next in line.
Of course back then, I was fourteen, and though I understood what he said, I couldn't quite yet relate with the sentiments he was talking about.
The composer's reflections actually kinda redeem my initial thoughts of the song. Now that I think about it - especially after I've been thrust into being "next in line" myself - not only do the lyrics make sense, but they sort of relate. But i still think it's crap as a musical composition.
I suppose that we who used to be in our early teens when that song first came out (we who, after our angsty hormone-adjustment years, and after our shock into "the real world", are now in our early thirties) have had to face the questions. And if we searched for them, we got our answers.
