My Teenage Angst Doesn't Have a Body Count

Long before I was the nerdy, bookish girl with her head buried in a story and her spare time spent writing fanfiction and buying books with her own money, I was a nerdy, bookish girl with her head buried in a story and her spare time spent writing fanfiction and begging her parents to buy books for her. I guess you can say not much has changed! My music taste is also included in this statement. I grew up as the target of much bullying, thanks to being poor and overweight in a school with mostly affluent peers who hit some kind of genetic lottery I wasn’t privy to. While I have no hard feelings now and hope all my bullies grew up to be lovely people, I was not so okay with it during the time. Enter my teenage angst: in soundtrack form. Yes, in case you were curious, I did actually make mixtapes on CDs that looked like vinyl! Now, without further ado, some of the songs that shaped who I am today.

Misery Business by Paramore

Long before I became a person who advocates so strongly against demonizing womens’ sexuality, I was as much a fan of this admittedly slut-shamy anthem as the rest of the girls my age. I had a massive crush on this boy who was dating one of my main bullies. I won’t name any names, but I was absolutely devastated when they continued to “date” months after I estimated they would “break up.” This song became something of a mental safe haven for me. I wanted to be able to hear it one day and feel like I too had won in the way Hayley Williams brags about winning a boy over in this absolute banger of a song. Yeah, okay, you caught me! I still listen to this song on my emo playlists, but with the understanding that it’s a little more problematic than I thought when I was younger. Also, now I laugh at my younger self gently for having been so into a boy who clearly was not interested in me. You live and you learn, I guess!

Chop Chop by The Academy Is…

This song was so important to my formative years because it was so heavy for my adolescent heart to hold. I was obsessed with the way William Beckett sang “you felt the sun warming your bed / you looked so quintessential pressed against that cross,” and I found myself sitting in front of the window’s media player visualizations screen, replaying those few seconds over and over again for hours after school. I was a budding writer, obsessed with words, and this song introduced me to both quintessential and existential. It also led me to my lifelong appreciation for this band, which to this day holds a place in my heart as one of my all time favorites. This leads me to my next song.

Dear Maria, Count Me In by All Time Low

As a painfully shy individual, I didn’t have many friends. However, the friends I did have all shared my intense love of music. All Time Low was a band we could all get behind. They were loud, punky, sexy- everything we wanted to be. We fell hard, but no one harder than my best friend Livy. (Spoiler alert: she’s still my best friend!) We went to every concert possible, wrote stories together based on their music, almost passed out at shows, and bought each other waters when we were too hot to function at the back of the venues. We got unnecessarily annoyed when we had to move from our spots close to the stage and used to drive our parents crazy with the pre-show album soundtracks and singing along loudly. All Time Low’s Dear Maria, Count Me In brings me back to those moments all at once when Alex Gaskarth coughs at the beginning. I can almost feel the sticky floor beneath my beat up low top chucks.

It Had To Be You by Motion City Soundtrack

This song came to me when I briefly lived with my grandparents. My grandma is a huge traveler- day trips everywhere, as often as possible. I remember going to Delaware and stopping in at a music store to see if they had one Fall Out Boy album I wanted. They did, but I also stumbled upon this album called “Even If It Kills Me” by Motion City Soundtrack. I only picked it up because one of my internet writing friends Wheeler had said she really liked that band, and I wanted her to think I was cool when we talked later that night over our angsty poetry exchange.Little did I know how many times I would replay that album on my CD player, lying awake until 3 in the morning writing and drawing every night. Now, whenever I’m in a writing rut, I put this album on and feel the unabashed confidence in my writing that I gained that summer, listening to this album over and over. Oh, and my friend did think I was cool. We are still extremely close!

I Write Sins Not Tragedies Panic! At The Disco

I was lucky enough to be around during peak Emo music, when Fueled by Ramen and Decaydance ruled the scene. Because of my fortunate music listening habits, I was into Panic! At The Disco before they found fame with this song. Literally just before, I mean, since this was their first album and boy did it shatter my world. I Write Sins Not Tragedies gave my dad a good segue into the music I liked and he and I, while we had little else in common, would be able to talk about the newest emo music I was listening to. When this song first came on the radio in his car, I remember him turning to me and saying, “Isn’t this the band you like?” That memory still gives me a nice little boost of joy every time I hear this song starting up.

Only One by Yellowcard

For a short while, I felt really disconnected with myself. I wasn’t listening to music, I wasn’t talking to my friends anymore, and I was lonely. I hadn’t been writing for about a year and I felt like maybe I was too old to pursue my creative endeavors. Frankly, I was a shell of the person I had grown to love and I wasn’t sure how I had gotten there. A friend at the time gently suggested we go to Warped Tour together. As a person who had based so much of their joy on music and writing, I felt like I was a poser at the concert venue. I was nervous, hot, and uncomfortable all day. It wasn’t like the Warped Tours of years past where I felt at home in the chaotic joy of the day. She said she wanted to go see Yellowcard perform and while I wasn’t the biggest fan, there were a few songs I quite enjoyed. As soon as the band started to play one of the songs I liked, I was overwhelmed by warmth. The clouds that had been threatening to downpour all day finally broke, and fat water droplets fell from the sky all over my body. I was overcome with emotion, and I almost immediately started to cry. The storm kept on, but the band played to the end of the song. Something changed, and I felt like I belonged there again. The rest of the day was full of joy. The storm ended almost as quickly as it had started and we warmed up under the direct sunlight while we stomped through the mud to see the next band at a different stage. That night, I went home and wrote for the first time in a year. Every time I hear this song, I get a little choked up for the girl who thought she would never find herself again.

I’m Not Okay by My Chemical Romance

I was a late adopter of the YouTube trend. I didn’t really think it would last that long, and I wasn’t really impressed with the content on the website. Then I discovered My Chemical Romance and I wanted to watch everything I could. Music videos, interviews, weird fan fiction video stories that had poorly cropped photos and uncomfortable comic sans writing overdramatic death scenes? I was all over it. YouTube became my haven. I remember sitting at my family’s computer and waiting for this video to load, watching it, and then restarting it probably a thousand times a day. I would write stories with this song as my soundtrack, dutifully pausing my writing every few minutes to reload the YouTube video. For the record, I only ever watched the Dialogue/MTV Version. I loved the opening about how Gerard Way likes DnD, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini and croquet, but how he was never gonna make it. My little emo heart would soar when he would say “I don’t wanna make it. I just wanna…” Because I felt exactly the same way. I didn’t want to make it. I just wanted… I didn’t know what. I just knew that song read me like an open book. This was a song my whole family could enjoy, and at every family function, you are still sure to hear this and Yeah! By Usher. That’s another story altogether, however.

Cupid’s Chokehold by Gym Class Heroes

My youngest sister is twelve years younger than I am, so I definitely influenced her music taste when she was a little girl. We are extremely close and spent an enormous amount of time together throughout her childhood before I went to college, so it’s not exactly unexpected that she’s a mini-me. So when she got into my car a few weekends ago and said “Talia, I have a new song I want you to listen to!” I knew it would be a good one. I heard the opening “bah bah dah dah” I was immediately excited. “Cupid’s Chokehold!” I said, excited, which was immediately followed by her asking if I had heard this “new” song before. My soul ascended into the astral plane as I explained not only had I heard this song before, but I had been around when the album came out and I had seen this song performed live. It was all in good fun, but I definitely teased her about thinking the song was new. It has been so wonderful watching her grow up and enjoy the same music as me. I have taken her to see some of the bands I saw at her age, and these moments have absolutely been some highlights of my life.

Chicago Is so Two Years Ago by Fall Out Boy

When someone asks me what my favorite song is, without fail it is still this song. It’s catchy, punchy, angsty, and beautifully written. The woman in the song is strong in her sexuality. The narrator describes being forced to interact with someone he used to love, still reeling and demanding that he “hates her.” Everything about this song made me feel alive. I have been enthralled with it since the first time I heard it in my grandma’s attic, where it inspired a poorly written vampire self-insert fic. Very classic teenaged girl writer stuff. I definitely still listen to this when I need something to invoke my edgy teenage writer for a story. Listening to it is essentially magic.

Push On! By NEWS

Now, you might have been familiar with some or most of the bands on this list, but I know it is extremely unlikely that you are familiar with NEWS. They are a Japanese boy band that I have loved with my whole heart for quite some time. While I was in the greatest depths of my emo years, I discovered Japanese live action adaptations of manga, which led to watching and buying an enormous amount of Japanese dramas. Then finally, these things led to a deep, deep appreciation for Japanese pop music. This song was not the first song I had ever heard by this band, but it was the song that I would stand at my bus stop and listen to on my MP3 player every single morning before school. Simply listening to it would make any bad mood vanish. It’s the cutest, sweetest, happiest song you will ever listen to. The music and lyrics are flirty enough to make you blush, even if you don’t speak Japanese. This was another song I kept on my “writing playlist” rotation as it gave me so much joy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a link to the audio of the song anywhere, so I’ve only been able to include a photo of the band!

Only ten songs?! No, there are plenty more. In fact, I have a playlist of mine and my best friend’s favorite songs from that period in our life, if you are interested in listening to it. These ten do represent some of the most crucial and important parts of my adolescence however, so I chose to highlight them in this mini playlist as an homage to my forever remembered Teen Angst. I hope that wherever you are in your life, you still cherish the teenager within you.