The Kind of Girl I Wanted to Be in the 2000's

I'm a 90's baby who became a 2000's teen. Music, for me, has always been a way of trying to find some craft that spoke to me and resonated in ways that made me go, "Yeah. I've felt that."

As a teenager, all you really want is acceptance. We all crave that one eclipse of a moment where we sync with another person and see our true selves mirrored back in that person's eyes. We long for understanding and meaning in guises outside ourselves.

And when we can't find that in someone else, as rare as that is? We look to the world around us—the stories, the performances, the words and the lyrics and the music.

Here are just some of the songs that resonated with me as I entered adolescence and grew into teenagerhood. Buckle up because it's about to get rocky—and angsty.

"Breathless" - The Corrs (2000)

My mom loved being a connoisseur of music—whether that was in the era of cassette tapes or the advent of CDs. It was not an uncommon outing for us to head after-school to the nearby Coconuts (the local chain which doubled as our purveyor of all things media) and browse through the selection of music. It was one of our surefire ways of bonding with each other.

In Blue from The Corrs was one of our finds circa 2000, and I remember my mom blasting the cassette tape in the car until it had worn out enough that she ended up rebuying the album in CD format.

Even though I wouldn't be a teen (officially) for three years, "Breathless"—the opener off the album—left me with the flutters of what I imagined love might be. The song was one I came back to again and again as the years progressed, as crushes became a centerpiece of my teenage longings and musings.

At that point, I wanted to be the kind of girl who loved deeply, freely, passionately—even though I didn't quite know what those things meant back then. Or how difficult it was to measure ideals against the oft-disappointing reality.

I wanted to live each day vibrantly, in style, with hope towards tomorrow.

And if there's no tomorrow

And all we have is here and now

I'm happy just to have you

You're all the love I need somehow

"Everywhere" - Michelle Branch (2001)

I remember the first time I saw Michelle Branch's name: I was eleven years old, the pages of Seventeen magazine open in my lap (yes, my mother did jump the gun by getting me that subscription), and one letter from a fan gushed about Michelle's music.

Even though I was still twee—far more likely to listen to soundtracks from my favorite cartoons than actual albums—I was curious enough to see if my mom had the CD. And, what do you know, she did have it.

I listened and fell in love, like many people did with Michelle's music. And the lyrics? They hit me straight in the bullseye of my heart. "Everywhere" especially made me hope that someday I would find the people—and not just a love interest—who would find me in a crowd and embrace what they saw.

You're in everyone I see

So tell me

Do you see me?

And I remember so, so, so wanting to be seen. At age eleven, at age sixteen, and even now at age thirty. I don't think that feeling will ever go away; I can't outrun it or outgrow it, whether that be good or bad in the long run.

"Ordinary Day" - Vanessa Carlton (2002)

Vanessa Carlton's bop "A Thousand Miles" from her debut album Be Not Nobody is one song that characterized a micro-generation, I think. So why am I not highlighting that song? Well—"Ordinary Day" peppered my twelve-year-old mindscape. If the lyrics could be transferred into film strips from my thoughts, I would have had my own little music video.

The word ordinary was also a pinpoint for me: this song made me believe the extraordinary could be hidden in the simple moments, the things that almost pass us by if we blink a tad too quick. Surprises could wait around every corner, and your dreams were only unreachable if you believed them to be.

I wanted to be the girl who walked through the world, eyes wide open, ready to see the magic that swirled unbeknownst to everyone else. And if that meanwhile included holding hands with someone who became my world? That would just be a bonus.

Take my hand, live while you can,

Don't you see your dreams lie right in the palm of your hand

"So Yesterday" - Hilary Duff (2003)

The first CD I can remember going out of my way to buy on my own was Hilary Duff's Metamorphosis. Does this surprise anyone who knows me? Probably not.

I was thirteen, and Hilary Duff was the girl I wanted to be: she looked like the typical girl-next-door, but she had this cool edge that came out every time she opened her mouth to sing. Everyone else thought Avril Lavigne was the bomb (and, yeah, I wouldn't have minded being her either), but Hilary had this sugar-and-spice mix that I would have loved to imitate.

I probably played the good girl too close to the textbook definition, but at least I lived vicariously through Hilary Duff and the other Disney starlets who would populate my music tastes in the years to come. Without Hilary, we probably would not have Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, or others.

"So Yesterday" as a song gives me this punch in the respect that this girl is standing her ground with the mature realization that even the bad spells don't last forever. The rejection from a crush, a bad grade on a test, even the petty arguments with your parents—these things may seem monumental in a teenager's limited sphere, but life continues to move on. And you don't want to let life pass you by while you mull over what's already in the past.

'Cause if it's over let it go and

Come tomorrow it will seem

So yesterday, so yesterday

I'm just a bird that's already flown away

"My Immortal" - Evanescence (2004)

These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real

There's just too much that time cannot erase

Everyone has a goth phase, right? While mine didn't involve black lipstick, ballpoint ink tattoos, or combat boots, I still had the emotional impact of being a goth at heart. And Evanescence? This band was just one aspect of it.

Amy Lee's haunting voice takes me back to days when I scribbled nonsense poems in a college-ruled notebook and thought I was so above it all. At age fourteen, I wanted to believe I was better than my peers who were gossiping about each other or making eyes at the boys/girls who would never return that same intensity.

(I was so full of myself.)

But "My Immortal"? This song in particular made me experience grief in a way I would not fully understand until much later in life. At the time, I thought this song was an ode to a romance that continued to live on beyond the grave. But now my mind is not so set on that interpretation that seems so ripped from an Edgar Allan Poe poem. The song is about great loss paired with great love, whether that be romantic or familial. And I get it now, I really do, no matter how much I wish I were still left in the dark about how loss truly does feel.

The girl I was in 2004 thought undying love was a key relationship goal, but now? I think of toxic relationships, codependency, power imbalances—things my teenage mind never even really fathomed as side-effects of love that was really just obsession's rose-tinted twin.

"You're Beautiful" - James Blunt (2005)

You're beautiful, it's true

I saw your face in a crowded place

And I don't know what to do

'Cause I'll never be with you

Why am I deviating from my formula to showcase a song performed by a man? Because I wanted to be the one who would be serenaded by this song. James Blunt's hit from his debut album Back to Bedlam made the heart of fifteen-year-old me go pitter-patter. Where was the guy who would lip-sync this song straight to me?

It just seemed hopelessly romantic to me that someone could spot you from afar and fall in love with you even in a fleeting way. I lingered on the lyrics, constructing a scenario in my head to match the scene laid out, and I imagined being the girl at the center of it all. And it made me want in a way I had never really experienced before.

At fifteen, I wanted nothing more than to be loved for who I was—even though, really, I didn't know what kind of person I exactly was. But I wanted to be deemed lovable by someone, anyone, who would tell me with sincerity, "You're beautiful."

And, even with my teenage years long past me, that feeling hasn't changed.

"Stupid Girls" - P!nk (2006)

At sixteen, I think I believed I was better than the other girls. "Good girl culture" still persisted in my school to the point that I sneered at every girl who tried to bend the dress code rules by wearing a skirt inches too short or baring too much skin in the cleavage department. I was catty, I know. And maybe a little jealous.

"Stupid Girls" by P!nk pretty much confirmed my biases long before I realized how toxic girl-on-girl hate and internalized misogyny could be. What right did I have to judge a girl who wanted to show off her body a bit? I mean, really, what was the big deal?

But there I was, judging every girl who walked past me, assuring myself that I was going to be the girl who was "smart." If I'd really been listening to the lyrics of P!nk's song, I would have realized the men are part of the problem in how women are treated and portrayed in society. It's not necessarily the "fault" of the girls for acting like how they were told they could achieve attention and success.

Baby if I act like that, flipping my blond hair back

Push up my bra like that, I don't wanna be a stupid girl

"Big Girls Don't Cry" - Fergie (2007)

I hope you know, I hope you know

That this has nothing to do with you

It's personal, myself and I

We've got some straightenin' out to do

I'd like to think I became a bit more empathetic by age seventeen. But, on the other hand, I also started hiding my heart more and more. My mom was exhibiting more health problems, and I didn't really trust anyone to be a good friend to me with everything going on.

Looking back, I was a pretty lonely teenager. I thought I had to shoulder all the burdens of my family's emotional dysfunction, yet I couldn't air out any of that dirty laundry either. I was trapped in that respect.

Yet I remember listening to Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" on repeat while tears silently fell down my cheeks. I wanted to be "the strong one," and so began my war with crying, to the point that I didn't shed tears unless I was in dire emotional distress. These "attacks" would occur every so often where I would hyperventilate as I sobbed, always alone in either my room or the bathroom as the tears betrayed me.

On the other side of the spectrum, I wanted the song's promise of someone understanding and being the one who could be trusted to be let inside. But that imagined savior didn't come like a prince on a white horse. And I, the girl who wouldn't cry, hated that I wished someone would come to pick up all my broken pieces. I would learn later that only I could put myself back together into an imperfect whole.

"Pocketful of Sunshine" - Natasha Bedingfield (2008)

As I entered year eighteen, I began to retreat into listening to the radio more and more often, and that's how I first heard "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Bedingfield.

There's a place that I go that nobody knows

Where the rivers flow and I call it home

And there's no more lies

In the darkness there's light

And nobody cries

There's only butterflies

I loved the idea of a "secret place" where you could hide away for a time to escape the woes of the world. More than a boyfriend or even a best friend I could tell anything to, eighteen-year-old me wanted a place to hide away—from my mother's illnesses, from my parents' apathetic marriage, from the expectations crushing me as I crossed the threshold into perceived adulthood.

I guess what I wanted more than anything was an avenue by which I could save myself—but I was still too scared to take those steps to self-actuality. I was still bound by my obligations to high school, to my parents, to the mantle of being "the good daughter" who would put away her own desires for the sake of the family. Archaic, I know, but that's how I felt back then.

But songs like these reminded me I was just a girl willingly trapping herself again and again. I wanted to break free, but it would be a good few years before I managed to do just that in my own way, in my own time.

"Good Girls Go Bad" - Cobra Starship ft. Leighton Meester (2009)

She was so shy

'Till I drove her wild

"Good Girls Go Bad" was the ultimate earworm for me in 2009, even with chart-toppers from Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift on the radio.

This song was also my guilty pleasure: I thought that if anyone knew I listened to it that they might question what kind of girl I really was—and what kind of girl I wanted to be. Was it wrong to want to be kinda bad? At least once in my life?

But I kept all of that locked inside, not on display for the world to see, even as I delved into darker material for my writing. Whatever I couldn't say aloud, I penned it in a notebook no one else would see. In this way, I began to take myself seriously as a writer and a potential storyteller.

I may have not been the ideal girl or the perfect picture, but I was finding pieces of myself in areas where I thought I had no right looking.

What happened after I left my teenage years behind? Well, let's start with a song.

"Firework" - Katy Perry (2010)

(I can't believe this song is over ten years old. I'm getting old over here...)

I know. I'm a cliché. Sue me.

Baby, you're a firework

Come on, let your colors burst

Make 'em go, "Oh, oh, oh"

You're gonna leave 'em all in awe, awe, awe

There's no getting around it: "Firework" by Katy Perry was a song that was synonymous to "hope" for me.

Turning twenty was a "no going back" moment for me. I couldn't blame anything on my "teenage years" anymore. I was an adult without the dread of teen attached. And this song took me from a dark place to a lighter stage where I could imagine better for myself.

I still had my issues—just as I have them now—but there were always going to be ups-and-downs. That was just the way life was.

I had to get used to telling myself that there was so much more than gray in the world around me.

I had to become a girl who could appreciate the rain and the rainbow alike.

~BONUS~

"Only Girl (in the World)" - Rihanna (2010)

I'll be quick with this one: I first heard this song at a time where I wanted nothing more than to be found "special" in some way. But now I listen to the lyrics and think that maybe, just maybe, I can make myself feel like I'm the only girl in the world. Maybe I don't need the mediator of someone else to help me achieve a better notion of self-love and all that entails.

Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world

Like I'm the only one that you'll ever love

Like I'm the only one who knows your heart

Only girl in the world

What do all these songs reveal? I guess it's the truth that I never really "found myself"—a common coming-of-age trope in fiction and in real life—even as I searched top and bottom in all the things around me. I let others define me far too much, especially going by what I could give rather than what I would receive in return. Even so, my experiences rounded me out enough to know that it's okay to still be searching, no matter how old you are.

I'm way past being a teen, but the journey of learning and becoming? I'm still walking it at this very moment. Teenage me might be disappointed if she had known that ahead of time, but the good thing is that she helped show me the way in the first place. And someday we'll both get to where we always wanted to be.

Below is a handy little Spotify playlist of the 12 songs mentioned in this article.

Thank you for reading, and please leave a heart before you go!