"I'm Just a Kid" is a song by Canadian pop punk band

Simple Plan Simple Plan is a Canadian rock band formed in Montreal, Quebec, in 1999. The band's current lineup consists of Pierre Bouvier (lead vocals, studio bass guitar), Chuck Comeau (drums), Jeff Stinco (lead guitar), and Sébastien Lefebvre (rhyt ...

, written by

Pierre Bouvier Pierre Bouvier (born May 9, 1979) is a Canadian singer and musician best known for being the lead vocalist and studio bassist of the rock band Simple Plan. He hosted the MTV reality show '' Damage Control''. Filmography Discography ...

. It appeared on their first album, '' No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls'', and was released as their debut single on February 4, 2002. The song saw a resurgence in popularity in April 2020 on the social media platform

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

, where the song was used in a challenge that involves family members re-creating childhood photos. A version of this song featuring

LØLØ Lauren Mandel (born November 6, 1997), known by her stage name LØLØ, is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Having built an audience via TikTok, she has released two EPs and one album with Hopeless Records. Her sound is influenced by pop-punk and a ...

premiered in November 2022 as an Amazon Original song. A parody version titled "I'm An Adult" was made in 2024 by

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

-based band CHILIØ, which rewrites the song from a grown-up perspective. Pierre Bouvier was part of the marketing for this version, and the parody gained popularity on TikTok.

Music video

The music video is about how an awkward, average guy (

DJ Qualls Donald Joseph Qualls (born June 10, 1978) is an American actor. He is best known for his television roles as Citizen Z on the Syfy horror series ''Z Nation'' (2014–2018) and Ed McCarthy on the Amazon Prime Video series ''The Man in the High Ca ...

) attempts to impress a popular girl (

Eliza Dushku Eliza Patricia Dushku (; born December 30, 1980) is an American former actress. Dushku starred as Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Faith in the supernatural Drama (film and television), drama series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' (1998–2003) an ...

) by attempting to perform dangerous stunts, but other, more popular boys (played by the band members) interrupt to take his place. They fail to succeed and are injured, and the main characters look on with pained expressions of pity and a certain amount of

schadenfreude Schadenfreude (; ; "harm-joy") is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. It is a loanword from German. Schadenfreude ...

. Ending with the average guy simply speaking to the girl and her walking off with him while the heavily injured popular boys watch in disbelief. There is also a surreal sequence, in which the archetypal popular boy, played by rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Sébastien Lefebvre, is hit by a school bus. The video was made with actors from the movie ''

The New Guy ''The New Guy'' is a 2002 American teen comedy film directed by Ed Decter, written by David Kendall and starring DJ Qualls, Eliza Dushku, Zooey Deschanel, Lyle Lovett, and Eddie Griffin. The film tells the story of high school loser Dizzy H ...

'', such as Qualls and

Tony Hawk Anthony Frank Hawk (born May 12, 1968), nicknamed Birdman, is an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, and the owner of the skateboard company Birdhouse. A pioneer of modern vertical skateboarding, Hawk completed the first docume ...

. As such, it was released as an extra on the DVD and VHS of ''The New Guy''. As well, in the video, there is a clip of Hawk taken from the final football game in the movie. Most of the scenes in the video were filmed at

Long Beach Polytechnic High School Long Beach Polytechnic High School, founded in 1895 as Long Beach High School, is a four-year public high school located at 1600 Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach, California, United States. The school serves portions of Long Beach, including Bixby ...

in Long Beach, California.

Track listing

# "I'm Just a Kid" (single version) # "One by One" # "Grow Up"

Certifications

Release history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:I'm Just A Kid 2001 songs 2002 debut singles Simple Plan songs Atlantic Records singles Songs written by Pierre Bouvier Songs written by Chuck Comeau Songs written by Arnold Lanni Songs written by Sébastien Lefebvre Songs written by Jeff Stinco Songs about children Songs about loneliness