Moving into the twentieth century, here’s Pulp’s ‘Help the Aged’ from 1997.
This song neatly reflects the mass of contradictions which surround ideas about ageing in millennial British culture. Jarvis exhorts us to remember that the aged are “just like you”, and that we will all get there one day. At the same time, the aged are consistently ‘othered’: they need “our” (young?) people’s help; they are a “they”.
This song is as much about helping yourself as much as helping the aged – we should give the aged a helping hand because one day we will be in their shoes. There is still some lingering idea that your youthful activity can affect your old age, but it is not like the moralizing we saw in Southey’s poem. Old age might be less regret-filled if we remember that “nothing lasts forever”. We should look after the aged now, because one day we might need such help ourselves. However, there is no guarantee that we will be repaid, no religious certainty of reward for virtuous actions. At its heart, this song is just asking everyone to be a bit more empathetic.
What is old age?
Old age is a terrible time here; a time of loss, when “it all falls away”, you “can’t have much fun” and you need younger people to give you “hope and comfort”. It is not your past activities, but your true inner self which catches up to you in old age: “you can’t run away from yourself”. It’s not all doom and gloom though – if you’re lucky someone might “realize it’s time [they] took an older lover, baby”.
Read the full lyrics here.
What is Old Age? 