“38 Years Old” by The Tragically Hip

"38 Years Old" turns a Kingston jailbreak into a family tragedy. The Tragically Hip wrote it together in Memphis while they were making Up to Here, their first full-length album, with Don Smith producing, and it went out as the record's fourth single in April 1990.

The story is borrowed from real life, loosely: 14 inmates broke out of Millhaven Institution, near the band's hometown in Ontario, on July 10, 1972, and the song fudges both the date and the head count. It's told from the side of a younger brother whose sibling is among the escapees, a man who had murdered the man who raped their sister. Gord Sinclair came up with the main riff on an acoustic guitar with two strings tuned down a whole step. For all its popularity, the band rarely played it live.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.