‘All My Friends’: the song that encapsulated getting old in the millennial age
As a rule, it’s best not to take The 1975 frontman Matt Healy too seriously, but his take on LCD Soundsystem’s defining dance-rock anthem ‘All My Friends’ is spot on. Calling it “the cool guy’s ‘Mr. Brightside,’” Healy nails the contrast between the two songs while acknowledging their shared ubiquity. The Killers’ 2004 smash is the soundtrack to every millennial lad’s Tuborg-soaked nostalgia, while ‘All My Friends’ digs deeper, offering a more introspective take on youth and ageing—without sacrificing its beer-sloshing, festival-singalong appeal.
It’s a universal pang that can strike anybody currently navigating their 30s. Moving through life shouldering greater responsibilities, professional pressures, perhaps rearing a family, then struck out of nowhere with the halcyon era of your youth, be it small town hangouts or your university days, nostalgia sick for a time before it all just got so much more complicated.
None of us really grow up deep inside, and if we could throw a switch and temporarily reinhabit our older selves for a night where nothing mattered except the joy of music, cheap beer, and the company of old friends before everybody disappeared across disparate corners of the country, most would push that button in a heartbeat.
It’s easy to forget how elderly frontman James Murphy was when releasing Sound of Silver‘s second single. More Gen X than millennial, Murphy was 37 when ‘All My Friends’ came out, wading through the introspective crisis many of its eager fans had yet to grapple with.
LCD Soundsystem’s fame hit Mutphy late in life, following years of DJing and cycling through various bands, including Falling Man and Speedking, knowing all too well the nagging sensation of perceiving to have missed the chance to make it big. Some of his wry self-deprecation colours the oft-acerbic nature of the lyrics: “When you’re drunk, and the kids look impossibly tanned/You think over and over ‘Hey, I’m finally dead'”.
Sometimes, nothing happens for a long time, and then everything happens all at once. From LCD Soundystem’s first single ‘Movement’, critical acclaim was showered on the group, deemed as the leading figures of the electronically-coated indie that, for better or worse, set the stage for new rave. It’s ‘All My Friends’, which has endured as their defining song, a stirring motorik-piano thumper that races through its seven minutes of emotional affect and wistful affirmations, perfect as a festival closer yet suited to private headphone contemplation too.
Its success and instant mass affection surprised nobody more than Murphy. “I didn’t realise what emotional impact melody has on people,” he told The Quietus in 2010. “I always think about lyrics and what they actually mean, and then I realised the energy I respond to physically people respond to emotionally. ‘Transmission’ is my favourite Joy Division song because of the way it arcs and arcs and arcs, and at the end, he’s screaming the same thing. And all he’s saying is ‘Dance to the radio!’ and I just want to cry. I never really considered what the song is about – it’s just an object. I think about songs in terms of them just being objects and not things that are about something else.”
It’s a song possessed with power that still shines unabated, growing old with a generation touching 40, and given new pertinence during the Pandemic’s sudden rupture in social lives that had been taken for granted. ‘Mr Brightside‘s cultural command will, at some point, fade, but ‘All My Friends’ will long endure, casting aside all the media noise and busy dogmas that choke communal affinity and serving as a reminder of how important those times with your friends are.
