Morning Song – Never Die Young

When James Taylor first released “Never Die Young” 30 years ago, he was just beginning to emerge from the dark shadows of a couple of decades or so of heroin use, trying to find his way into the light of sobriety.

On the evidence of this old video, MTV didn’t help.

Taylor is not a made-for-television music star. It turns out he’s more of a comfortable-sitting-on-a-kitchen-stool-safely-hidden-behind-my-guitar-and-underneath-my-cap-and-surrounded-by-my-band kind of music star.

But in 1988, to sell records you had to make videos…no matter how uncomfortable you were with standing up and lip-syncing as the camera was pointed at you.

Fortunately, Taylor’s singing and songwriting skills had endured through all the damage he’d been doing to himself and those around him.

“Never Die Young” is a lovely, uplifting song—explicitly with its prayerful chorus of “hold them up, don’t let them fall” referring to a younger generation alive with hope and love and innocence; and implicitly too for the more cynical, beaten-down-by-life, older generation observing and surrounding the young: that they might let go of their own bitterness and rejoice as the “golden ones sail on“.