I Don't Want to Grow Up is the second studio album by the American punk rock band the Descendents, released on May 15, 1985, through New Alliance Records. It marked the end of a two-year hiatus for the band, during which singer Milo Aukerman had attended college and drummer Bill Stevenson had joined Black Flag. I Don't Want to Grow Up was the first of two albums the Descendents recorded with guitarist Ray Cooper, and their last with original bassist Tony Lombardo, who quit the group because he did not want to go on tour. Though recorded quickly and without much rehearsal time, I Don't Want to Grow Up received positive reviews from critics, who praised its catchy songs, strong melodies, and pop-influenced love songs.
Background
The Descendents' first full-length album, Milo Goes to College (1982), had been so named because singer Milo Aukerman was departing the band to attend college; he enrolled at El Camino College for one year, then attended the University of California, San Diego from 1983 to 1985, where he studied biology. In his absence, the band—guitarist Frank Navetta, drummer Bill Stevenson, and bassist Tony Lombardo—recruited Ray Cooper as singer and continued performing locally for a time during 1982 and 1983. Cooper preferred playing guitar to singing, however, and the band would occasionally perform with Aukerman as a quintet during his return visits to Los Angeles.
Stevenson also joined Black Flag in early 1983, intending to be in both bands simultaneously. "I'm the Descendents' drummer", he said at the time. "I'm permanently in both bands. Other than that, I'm a nice person." He spent most of January–May 1983 on the road with Black Flag, touring the United States and Europe. With this experience, he desired to take the Descendents on tour as well: "I got a taste of touring in Black Flag," he later recalled, "and I wanted to take that and spread it laterally to what the Descendents would or could do." However, he encountered resistance from Navetta and Lombardo: "Bill kind of sat down with me and Frank and said something to the effect of we were at a point where we needed to grow by going on the road", Lombardo later said. "Frank said no, and I had to say no also, so he said he had to leave the band and we were both kind of bummed out. I don't think Frank even believed him at first. That was a bad scenario." Stevenson soon found Black Flag's touring and recording schedule too busy to allow time for the Descendents. "I got in over my head", Stevenson later said. "When I joined [Black] Flag I had every intention of doing both bands but it was physically impossible. Flag had all this stuff in progress, so I put Descendents on hold."
With the Descendents effectively on hiatus, Navetta, Lombardo, and Cooper tried to start a new band, the Ascendants, but only played one show. Stevenson remained in Black Flag, with whom he recorded five studio albums, a live album, and two EPs, and toured consistently from March through December 1984. According to Aukerman, the idea to record a new Descendents album originated in March 1985 during the recording of Black Flag's Loose Nut album:
<blockquote>Bill was recording with Black Flag and he invited me up to do backing vocals for Loose Nut. He pulled me aside and he's like "Hey, I got these songs, but they're not Black Flag songs, they're really more Descendents songs", and I said "Let me hear them." It was just an instrumental track and he sang over it and sang "Silly Girl" to me and I was like "Wow!" He said "I can't do these in Black Flag." I said "Well, maybe we should do them!"
Writing
In addition to the songs Stevenson had written, the other band members made songwriting contributions to the album. Although Frank Navetta had left the band, one song he had written lyrics for, "Rockstar", was used for the album. Cooper's sole writing credit is on lyrics to the lead track, "Descendents", which are attributed to the entire band.
Aukerman's lyrics to "Pervert" dealt with his conflicting feelings about his libido: "['Pervert'] is about how I like to have sex, but sometimes I like it so much that I think I'm perverted", he said in a mid-1980s interview. "Sometimes I want to have sex so much that I think I'm a pervert, so that's why I wrote the song. Even though sex is the healthiest thing in the world, the most natural thing, sometimes for some strange reason my psyche tells me that I should be a pervert for wanting to have it so much."
Recording
The band learned the new material and recorded the album within a two-week period, leaving little time to rehearse the songs. "He was really fond of those 1980s production trappings, and the record is polluted and corrupted with them", Stevenson later reflected, complaining that "[It] sounds like all weird, reverby, crazy '80s shit."