playlist
Beat's recommended playlist for all of your musical needs.
My legitimate path towards self discovery- through music.
As far as I can remember, music has always allowed me to release pent-up emotions that I have held in. I can recall times and situations as a teenager using lyrics from songs as a way to cope with the uncertain paths I faced in my life while growing up.
By Janelle M Medina5 years ago in Beat
Punk<Maybe
I start with this song in particular, but the whole entire album in actuality. I was always angst ridden being the black sheep through being the brown baby in the midst of a very white and tall family. This was not helped through a life of not fitting in and being the poor brown girl in the white rich private schools I attended. I had a life altering event in the 5th grade that really solidified that angst. Then my mom moved us from a small city I hated to a micro town after freshman year which I was predisposed to hate because NYC was the goal. I was immediately looked at as being the mysterious being I was and still am by these new creatures of this small town as being the newest friend possibility to the weird. Little did they know I decided to spite my mom by refusing to make friends and I catapulted anybody who tried. I still wanted to be seen and noticed, though, so I played the part super well. I walked around with my Walkman on blast so people could hear how awesome I was and looked like I had no cares in the World. This song and album had a mix of rock, pop and classical that seemed to project the whole of my soul. The lyric in this song “prepare to live in danger if we want to stay out late” was angry and feminist and the name “By Myself” encompassed what I always was and always would feel. Little did I know this was a self-fulfilling concept and I did not have friends for a long time and when I finally did, they were never trusting or close to me the way friends normally would. I was told that everybody was interested in me and wanted to be my friend, but my no care attitude and constant rebukes of friendship offerings kept them away and their interest faded.
By Jessica Powers 5 years ago in Beat
I Wanna RRRiot! Playlist
Most people used to detest punk rock because they found it too loud, too aggressive, and too confrontational. But to the kids like me that it managed to convert, punk became an unlikely conduit that exposed them to viewpoints they would never have encountered otherwise.
By Chad Verzosa5 years ago in Beat
The Apathetic Angst of the 90's
We were a generation that embodied listless apathy, few if any taking up a cause. We had one foot in analog and the other in digital not knowing exactly where we belonged. It was the last year of the millennium, 1999. I was 16, a sophomore and unlike all my peers, I didn’t listen to modern music. I was convinced I was born in the wrong decade. Up until this point, modern music did not exist to me. Not due to any pretentious music snobbery, but because it was all a cacophony of sound that I could never appreciate. Music died for me the day The Beatles broke up, over a decade before I was even conceived. My angst at the time was encapsulated by “I’m a Loser” because what 90’s teen is complete without their hand in an L shape over their forehead?
By Cindy Ramos 5 years ago in Beat
The Angsty Songs of My Youth that are Still Shaping My Life Today.
It was a long road from falling in love with 90's grunge and 2000's punk to writing and releasing a song. A road filled with heartache and petty drama that all inevitably led me to the music and bands that inspired me to start writing my own songs. From Nirvana and Paramore to My Bloody Valentine, here's the most important angsty anthems and groups from my teen years that influenced me so much I had to give it a go myself!
By Paul Heder5 years ago in Beat
Coming of Anxiety
The author remembers her days glued to the headset as if her life depended on it. She obviously wasn't the only one. Throughout middle school and the beginning of high school was a wicked rollercoaster that was not something that could be easy to get off of. Here, we talk about the feelings of mixed rage and loneliness; the realization that life doesn't get any easier. The missing of nap times from whence we were little and the happiness of blissful ignorance that comes between the ages of newborn and twelve. The headset and music players used should be a right of passage every teenager gets to isolate themselves and their world from encroaching baddies (siblings, parents, conforming adults, etc.). This is my personal playlist that ultimately molded me and had helped get through A LOT:
By Candis Ruiz5 years ago in Beat
Pop Helped Me Through Puberty
A glittering stage, over-lit and garish in its over dressing. Upon it a single girl, dressed in a short gown made of hundreds of metal discs - a dress that had come close to disintegrating before she made it onto the stage, which would have left her almost naked before the audience. And then a voice rising up and up, yelling out a pop number with very little in the way of depth lyrically, but a catchy beat.
By Sophie Jackson5 years ago in Beat
