“Wasted Life”

In their song, “Wasted Life,” Stiff Little Fingers explore the heritage of violence that they find themselves confronted with living through The Troubles. The song title itself, “Wasted Life,” is aimed at individuals who choose to use violence to achieve their ideological ends. The first lines in the song, “I could be a solider, Go out there and fight to save this land, I could be a peoples soldier, Paramilitary gun in hand,” indicates a sense of mockery, again aimed at violent ideologues fighting to “save the land.” Here the band clearly pushes back against the violent history of their homeland as well – opposing the views of the first verse character of Lamar’s “m.A.A.d. City“.

Protestant youth next to a Unionist paramilitary mural – note the apparent chaos in the background and how at ease the youth look surrounded by violence.

The issues of heritage and violence are mixed in “Wasted Life” as seen in the chorus – “They wanna waste my time, They wanna waste my life, and They’ve stolen it away.” Emphasis is added on ‘They.” A heritage of violence fostered by The Troubles is caused by the extremely divided sectarian population of Northern Ireland. Being approached by paramilitary groups as a form of recruitment would not be something unheard of for the young band members of Stiff Little Fingers. Band members interviewed for Kicking Up a Racket and discussed threats of violence from paramilitary groups for singing about and exposing their fallacies – “There’s no doubting that such encounters with the Provisional IRA and the Loyalist paramilitaries were, potentially, highly dangerous.”

The last stanza in Wasted Life also brings to focus the cyclical heritage of  violence seen not only in Lamar’s “Money Trees” but the first verse of “Sing About Me” as well. “Still they come up to me, With a different name but the same old face, I can see a connection, With another time and a different place.” This is an allusion to the constantly changing and fragmenting of paramilitary groups. The IRA is the best example of this, splitting multiple times in its history, with each new split claiming to have the correct ideological standing.

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