Turning from sixteen straight to sixty is not the goal. Part of the reason Jagged Little Pill and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie mean so much to me, for example, is that I think Alanis sketches, in her own rudimentary style, a remarkable number of ageless truths, but another huge component of my affection is that I'm so sure she'll look back on some of these songs with intense chagrin. Proud , intense chagrin, I hope. So they weren't quite ready to close the cupboard. Challenges intrude on their own schedule, not ours, yet we allow ourselves to feel much too much pressure to face them as they arrive.
Childhood is accelerated.
Every phase of our life is accelerated. Pop is temperamentally suited to remind us of many things, but there are a few lessons for which it may be one of the last teachers. I'm not ready. You Will Have Your Revenge Glimmers of progress towards gender parity notwithstanding, part of why Shampoo is precious to me is that theirs is a story of girls' childhood, and girls' conceptions of rebellion, and eventually girls' terms of reconciliation with adulthood, and another century down, those are still worryingly unfamiliar stories. To an extent the entire developmental course of my musical tastes, starting at about fifteen when I first realized that there was other music at all, has been a slow process of integrating femininity.