CATBEAR’s Brisk and Urgent Synth Pop Single “Grow Up” Speaks Truth to the Lie of Striving Culture

The brisk pace and forward momentum of CATBEAR’s new track “Grow Up” gives the song an upbeat quality but as the song progresses that urgency reveals itself to be a barely controlled desperation. The melodic dissolves and swells and expertly accented pace lends a cinematic quality to this song about how we’ve all been sold a bill of goods about society and its system of rewards and how we’re told to “grow up” when doing so means to have achieved middle class definitions of success even when the middle class is basically non-existent and that hard work and being “responsible” often means treading water and nothing more. But that feedback reinforcement mechanism we’ve all been conditioned to believe is just not adequate to meet the moment when people become acutely aware of the complete fraud of late capitalism. Does growing up and going into the working world mean simply grinding away at a dead end job with little chance of getting ahead with the promise of such dangled in front of you perpetually out of reach for most people? How does one cope with this bleak reality with ecological collapse and civilizational implosion seeming not too far on the horizon with the powers that be doing fuck all about it? It’s not cynical, as is said in the song, to not believe in this fake dream anymore even as a way to get through to a better job or better prospects. After all who has time for a finding a better job and qualifying for one when you’re working a job that leaves you feeling worn out at the end of the day? Or two jobs or two and a half? When the band sings the line “(It’s a test), it’s a test/And we try, just to find, the cheat code to life” it rings true because the game is rigged against you if you weren’t born to great privilege. When conservative types criticize “quiet quitting” and other such phenomena they’re the ones who are delusional thinking people should have to surrender their entire lives for not being born “lucky.” CATBEAR’s song is less than three minutes long but it gets to the heart of the anxieties of modern life with a catchy song synth pop song succinctly and with a poetic truth that even getting to hear it feels like validation and not dismissal of one’s concerns. Listen to “Grow Up” on Spotify and follow London’s CATBEAR at the links below.