[‘I Taught Myself How To Grow Old’] is a tricky tune, because it can mean a lot of different things, I think. I’ve heard it back since, and it was shocking to me that it was as blunt as it was. I think the emotional activity in that song is more talking about not just myself but the way that a person can, when they’re younger, aspire to being older, aspire to feel in some ways more like their heroes. In my late teens and through my twenties, the people that I admired and the people that I looked up to in my life were older.

My grandfather, for instance, or some of my musical heroes or literary heroes or people to me who were heroic who were artists. They were people who were older and lived a more sophisticated kind of life. And some of the pain associated with that, some of their problems, which were adult problems, I think that somehow it seemed like a romantic notion to take those on as a young man. Just by writing that song, it was some way of admitting or figuring out that it wasn’t necessarily the right decision, you know?

It’s kinda like be careful what you wish for. If you decide that you wanna live like Tom Waits or something, so you wanna move to the dark side of the street or live in the back of a barroom to feel their feelings, then you’re in your early twenties by the time that you would have had the experiences of spring or summer of your life. You might end up in a bit of a darker place than you expected.

Ryan Adams, Clash (May/June 2007)