Simply Red – Holding Back The Years

“Holding Back the Years” – Single by Simply Red from the album Picture Book
B-side: “I Won’t Feel Bad” / “Drowning in My Own Tears” (re-issue)
Released: 4 November 1985 and 6 May 1986 (re-issue)
Label: Elektra WEA
Songwriters: Mick Hucknall and Neil Moss
Producer: Stewart Levine
Charted No.1 in US and No.2 in UK

Hucknall wrote this song in his bedroom at his father’s house when he was 17. The inspiration for the song came from a teacher at the Manchester School of Art, where Hucknall studied fine art. The instructor suggested that the best paintings are created when the artist is in a state of unconscious creation, and Hucknall attempted to use this approach in his songwriting.

Hucknall didn’t realize what the song was about until he’d finished it. “It’s about that moment where you know you have to leave home and make your mark, but the outside world is scary,” he explained. “So you’re holding back the years.”

The accompanying music video for “Holding Back the Years” focuses on Mick Hucknall, who, while singing the song, walks through the English countryside and Whitby Abbey carrying luggage and thinking about his childhood memories and the difficult relationship he had with his father. The other members of Simply Red (except for Fritz McIntyre, who plays a one-man band) play local cricketers who greet Hucknall as he passes by and later watch him on the Whitby 199 steps. In the last part of the song, Hucknall is seen riding a train, the scenes for which were filmed at and around Goathland railway station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.