On the playground you learned

How to share with the kids

But you still didn’t feel you fit in

How fitting, your confusion when you turned sixteen

You knew how to paint by numbers

But you knew it wasn’t rock and roll

You learned tight pants, spray-paint and eyeliner

You said glam-rock would save your soul

But you didn’t grasp that the rebellion you wanted

Wasn’t something you can ever be sold

And i never understood how someone

Could be so willing to be absorbed

Into what i never though could be pass as identity

And i always felt bad for the kids

Who had to share their faces

With sad teenagers across the world

Who'd found something to fill their loss

Without ever addressing the cause

And i heard your speech patterns imitated exactly

By a girl in seattle and again in minneapolis

So i guess he must of learned that from tv

You said you’d find yourself for real

But fell that far from the goal

You had to paint by numbers

But knew it wasn’t r-r-r-rock and roll