Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
Your age is the hardest age
Out of all of the major songs on Let It Be, the hardest one for me to get into was “Sixteen Blue.” Sometimes it just happens that way: you know on every objective level that a song is great, but it just doesn’t resonate with you.
Maybe because I was 21, and didn’t want to try to relate to teenagers, having just escaped being one for what felt like an eternity, and so it didn’t quite resonate with me the same way that the more adult themes “I Will Dare” or “Unsatisfied” or, heh, “Answering Machine” did.
Or maybe because it was yet another slow one, with a beat not so dissimilar from the one in “Unsatisfied,” only without the dynamic builds. Not to mention that while Bob Stinson was on it, he kinda just meandered around, even during his solo. But that said, it was really hard to ignore the Tommy-inspired lyrics, which — objectively — I knew were amazing.
Brag about things you don’t understand
A girl and a woman, a boy and a man
Everything is sexually vague
Now you’re wondering to yourself
If you might be gay
As always, Paul’s singing is amazing, full of pathos, and even trembling a bit when he gets to “if you might be gay,” which he practically mumbles, not out of contempt, but out of empathy for what that might mean for the character in the song. And then, of course he goes into full-throated mode on the chorus.
Your age is the hardest aaaaaaaaage
Everything drags and drags
One day, baby, maybe help you through
And while “Sixteen Blue” was inspired by Tommy — neither the first nor the last time Paul would use him as a muse — it never felt strictly about Tommy, who was living a different life from nearly other teenager in the world, but rather, to me it felt more like Paul’s version of the early songs that Pete Townshend wrote about teenagers, which universalized it more.
Drive your ma to the bank
Tell your pa you got a date
But you’re lying
Now you’re lying on your backTry to figure out, they wonder what next you’ll pull
You don’t understand anything sexual
I don’t understand
Tell my friends I’m doing fine
After the second chorus, there’s a pretty restrained Bob Stinson guitar solo, that really wasn’t sure what it wanted to do, which, weirdly enough is thematically on point, in terms of not having any kind of real direction, though I don’t know if that was originally the point.
After that Paul comes back in for the final choruses.
Your age is the hardest age
Everything drags and drags
You’re looking funny
You ain’t laughing, are you?
Sixteen blue
Sixteen blue
Sixteen blue
Sixteen blue
Sixteen blue
Sixteen blue
And with the whole band hitting hard on every syllable of each “six-teen blue” led by Paul’s guitar and Chris’s snare, “Sixteen Blue” starts cutting hard, and it’s capped off by an absolutely gorgeous Paul guitar solo — chalk full of feedback and drama — perhaps his finest instrumental moment on any Replacements album, with the possible exception of the end of “The Ledge.”
It was that solo — wailing and keening as it fades away — that finally got me into “Sixteen Blue.” Of course, it probably helped that the greatest song in the history of songs followed it, meaning that I wasn’t ever going to stop listening to side two of Let It Be.
“Sixteen Blue”
“Sixteen Blue” live in Minneapolis, 1983
“Sixteen Blue” live in Hollywood, 2015