What’s Up?!?

25 years and I'm alive here still

Trying to get up that great big hill 

of hope

For a destination

I realized quickly when I knew I should

That the world was made up of this

Brotherhood of man

For whatever that means

And so I cry somethimes when I'm lying in bed

Just to get it all out 

what's in my head

And I'm, I am feeling a little peculiar

So I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I take deep breath and I get real high

And I scream from the top of my lungs

What's goin' on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

Oooh...

Oooh...

And I try, oh my God do I try

I try all the time

In this institution

And I pray, oh my God do I pray

I pray every single day

For a revolution

And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed

Just to get it all out what's in my head

And I'm, I am feeling a little peculiar

So I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I take deep breath and I get real high

And I scream from the top of my lungs

What's goin'on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

Oooh...

25 years and I'm alive here still

Trying to get up that great big hill of hope

For a destination . . . 

. . . And somehow, 33 years after 4 Non Blondes released “What’s Up?” in 1993, it doesn’t sound dated at all.

That’s what gets me about it. The song starts with this almost innocent idea: I’m alive, I’m climbing this hill, surely there’s a destination up there somewhere. Then comes adulthood’s terrible little revelation: you look around at the institution we’ve built, at this supposed “brotherhood of man,” and think, for whatever that means.

And then the question that never gets answered:

What the hell is going on?

Not “what’s wrong with me?”

Not even “how do I fix it?”

Just — WHAT IS GOING ON?

There’s something almost primal about the progression: lie in bed and cry because your head is too full. Get up. Walk outside. Breathe deeply. Alter your consciousness a little. Then scream into the enormous indifferent world.

And keep trying.

That may be the part that lands differently when you hear it decades later. She isn’t singing about having figured anything out. She’s singing about trying all the time. Praying for a revolution. Climbing that ridiculous great big hill of hope without ever being promised there’s actually something waiting at the top.

At 25, that sounds like youthful existential angst.

At 76, it can sound like a fucking life philosophy:

I’m alive here still.

I’m still climbing.

I still don’t understand what the hell we’re doing.

I’m under no illusion that everything is going to work out.

But I’m still looking. Still witnessing. Still asking:

WHAT’S GOING ON?