The last we heard from Rostam (aside from his Amanda Gorman song) was his October single “Unfold You.” Now he’s back with his first official single of 2021, a breezy number called “These Kids We Knew.” On the track, he takes a critical position on how older generations deal (or don’t deal) with climate issues.
The lyrics to the song are simple, as they consist of a handful of repeated lines: “These kids we knew for so long / they don’t speak like they been spoken to / by governments or emperors / Gonna line you up on the sidewalk court / Ain’t proud of where we’re going / You say we can’t afford the slow down / but the skies won’t take it no more / so we’re gonna slowly pull the earth back together.”
Rostam says of the track:
“I was thinking of three generations while I was writing this song. There’s a generation of adults who don’t see global warming as their problem because they think they won’t be impacted by it. Then there’s a generation younger than mine, who will certainly have to deal with what is happening. In the song I have a fantasy of the younger generation arresting the adults and putting them on trial in the streets of cities around the world. Those are the ‘sidewalk courts’ that I sing about in the song. The song was written in a fever-dream state during the second week of March last year while I was recovering from COVID-19.”
Listen to “These Kids We Knew” above.
