SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (16)
By:
November 24, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… ska records! PLAYLIST HERE. Series edited by Josh Glenn.
I first listened to “Too Much Too Young” by The Specials (technically, at that time, The Special A.K.A) when I was a teenager. A rebel anthem with a searing tempo that tells the story of someone running from a life closing in on them. It was also the first time I heard anyone called a “silly moo.”
When Terry Hall, looking like he’d just scrabbled out from his Midlands council estate and into the shriek of the stage lights, sneered, “You’ve done too much, much too young / Now you’re married with a kid when you could be having fun,” it was less a judgment than a kind of anti-eulogy. A lament not for the child bride, but for the self that could have been. Anti-future music. The song, in its brevity and blast, becomes anthemic not for what it tells us to do, but for what it reminds us we don’t have to do. It tells us that to opt out — of marriage, of motherhood, of monetized selfhood — is still a radical act.
For months now, I have been walking around unfocused, unhappy, unproductive — anxious, sad and angry — trying to think about that song. What might I want to say about that song? For months now it’s been playing in my head — the velocity of the music, the staccato spit of horns, the drums that refuse to settle down, Hall’s delivery of the lyrics is detached, almost deadened — the perfect affect, as backdrop and pulse, to the horrors both here in America and abroad. The song is set in Thatcher-era Britain, but something of it resonates globally, today. It is still brilliant. A critique of conservative morality. A nihilistic lament. A big middle finger to authority. It encourages listeners to question conformity and fight for agency in defining their own futures.
Turns out it’s still a pretty good anthem for venting, stomping, and mourning our collective futures. In America now, where the illusion of upward mobility has burst for most, “having fun” becomes something like survival: Joy as political protest, leisure as reparative gesture, pleasure as refusal. So, I hit “replay” and let it propel me forward.
“Ain’t you heard of the starving millions? …” reverberating in my brain.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lucy Sante on Margarita’s WOMAN COME | Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE | Susannah Breslin on The [English] Beat’s MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM | Carl Wilson on Prince Buster / Madness’s ONE STEP BEYOND | Carlo Rotella on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET | Rani Som on The Bodysnatchers’ EASY LIFE | David Cantwell on Desmond Dekker’s 007 (SHANTY TOWN) | Francesca Royster on Joya Landis’ ANGEL OF THE MORNING | Mimi Lipson on Folkes Brothers’ OH CAROLINA | Alix Lambert on The Specials’ TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG | Marc Weidenbaum on Dandy Livingstone’s RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU | Heather Quinlan on Fishbone’s MA & PA | Will Hermes on The [English] Beat’s WHINE & GRINE / STAND DOWN MARGARET | Peter Doyle on The Skatalites’ GUNS OF NAVARONE | James Parker on The [English] Beat’s SAVE IT FOR LATER | Brian Berger on The Upsetters’ RETURN OF DJANGO | Annie Zaleski on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ SOME DAY I SUPPOSE | Deborah Wassertzug on The Bodysnatchers’ TOO EXPERIENCED | Dan Reines on The Untouchables’ I SPY FOR THE FBI.
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