Back on June 9th, 2017, Self announced they'd be dropping their fifth album, Ornament & Crime, through El Camino Media. It seemed like a pretty typical album rollout, with some vinyl pre-orders and all the marketing that goes along with it.
Not very typically, though, is the lead single for an album a song the artist doesn't care about. Even less typically is this single released over 14 years before the rest of the material.
How did the song earn this status on such a belated project, and what place did it have next to Self's signature sound? To get to that, you first need to understand the backstory of the impatient, over-caffeinated alternative rock song "Grow Up".
A conventional rock single that grew up without its album
Structurally, "Grow Up" is one of Self's cleanest pop-rock constructions. It's brisk without feeling rushed, running 116 bars at 140 beats per minute in 4/4 common time. With a couple seconds to fade out, this lands at 3 minutes and 21 seconds.
The form is very radio-minded with an instrumental intro for DJs to talk over, two verses and pre-choruses, three anthemic choruses, and a guitar break in the middle. This concrete structure separates it from the toy-pop oddity of Gizmodgery, following the early-2000s alt-rock scene instead.
In this context, "Grow Up" being hooky, short, bright, compressed, and instantly legible makes perfect sense. The funny part is that even when Self is playing the major-label single game, Mahaffey's writing still bends the song into something more neurotic and self-aware than the average pandering pitch.
Desperate pacing without losing melodic control
This song harmonically sits in the brighter side of Self's power-pop language, as the verses carry a chugging, conversational feeling. It further uses punchy chords and fast harmonic rhythm to build a chorus moving with restless pop-rock energy.
The rhythm section of "Grow Up" gives a clean forward push, with drums locking into a tight rock pulse while guitars and keys fill the space around the vocal. Unlike the more stuttering experiments in Self's catalog, this song mostly avoids disruptive rhythmic tricks. Its job is to sprint forward.
The verses are especially effective because they balance motion and clutter. Mahaffey crams in lines about television, self improvement, fake destiny, and romantic confusion, but the music keeps the phrasing contained. The result is a spiraling stalker of a narrator assisted by an intensifying backdrop.
Romantic delusion disguised as self-improvement
Lyrically, "Grow Up" begins with a list of things our narrator is not and things he plans to become. He's "not a doctor yet", glued to the TV, planning to work out, and thinking about taking up painting. These are superficial transformations are the kind of vague adult upgrades someone announces instead of changing.
That's the whole engine of the song. The narrator thinks maturity is a future costume he can put on once the situation demands it. His choice to forge a life instead of building one isn't too dissimilar from what They Might Be Giants did a decade later on "All the Lazy Boyfriends", a band whom Self notably took inspiration from.
The second verse turns darker. The threat to call the police make it clear this is not a cute romantic chase, but persistence crossed into delusion. Still, he responds not with self-awareness, but with more cultural research, studying Sex and the City as if a sitcom could provide the missing manual for women.
Overarching insecurities laid out over matching tones
The chorus is where the song's title becomes both sincere and pathetic. "As soon as I grow up" sounds like a hopeful promise, but the surrounding lines make it slippery. Its inability to ever fully clarify whether growing up is imminent or impossible make the song's fast tempo is so fitting.
Through the narrator's various excuses, it sounds like someone trying to outrun self-reflection. The music keeps accelerating toward the chorus, but the character keeps arriving at the same place: calling again, asking again, promising again.
"Grow Up" works as a late-album adrenaline shot on Ornament & Crime, with a body full of guitars. Its organs add a slightly retro color that keeps the arrangement from becoming plain early-2000s radio rock, while the vocal harmonies nod toward Mahaffey's love of layered pop craft.
A detour that became a lead single
This song's development was always ahead of the curve. For some recording sessions between July 17th and 30th, 2002, Self planned on recording "Insecure Sober", "No One Knows You", "Hellbent", and "The Pounding Truth". However, the last one got pushed back two months to make way for the immediate recording of "Grow Up" instead.
The band later shared footage of them making the song, presenting a Beach Boys style of recording vocal harmonies and keyboardist Chris James performing the song's organ, as well as a dramatic rendition played on a piano illuminated by candles.
One of the first press releases DreamWorks put out for Ornament & Crime said it'd release on June 3rd, 2003. This was followed by several more delays into 2004, though they put the single release of "Grow Up" near the original slot in return. It later got song artwork by Azarath, one of the band's several graphic designers.
A throwaway favorite as the album's stand-in
Due to the nature of DreamWorks Records folding in 2004 and Self being dropped by the merger, "Grow Up" ended up being Ornament & Crime's only representation for 14 years. This little piece of the album was widely enjoyed by fans upon release, but did the band think the same way about it?
Ironically, the song's single status came from Mahaffey's own lack of attachment to it. When an interviewer brought up "Grow Up" as a great single, Mahaffey responded, "That's actually one of my least favorite songs on the album, that's why we kinda put it out there".
In other words, the track that became Ornament & Crime's public face was not necessarily the one its creator saw as the record's strongest statement. "Grow Up" might not be Mahaffey's favorite Self song, but it is one of the most historically important.
The cleanest Self single with the messiest emotional core
For years, it carried the burden of representing a record people could not legally hear in full. It was catchy enough to justify anticipation, polished enough to explain DreamWorks' interest, and weird enough around the edges to prove Self had not been fully sanded down.
That makes its place in the catalog stranger than its sound might suggest. As a composition, it is tight, fast, and deceptively smart. Its clean pop-rock arrangement makes romantic delusion sound triumphant. Its chorus turns immaturity into an anthem without fully endorsing it.
In sum, "Grow Up" is Self's major-label radio song with a nervous breakdown hiding inside. It may not be the strangest thing Mahaffey ever wrote, but it is one of his clearest examples of turning arrested development into a hook. The song asks for adulthood, postpones it, laughs at it, and then calls one more time anyway.
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