Songs About Being A Teenager

This week on the Songs About Podcast we talk songs about being a teenager.

The teenage years - when you're too young to drink or vote but you're old enough to be drafted to fight in a war - have provided some brilliant inspiration for musicians over years.

From love to laziness and anguish to anxiety, we discuss some old and new songs that tackle the feelings of boredom, hope, love and anxiety that come with puberty, growing up and becoming a teenager.

When you think back to your teenage years, what do you remember?

Any similarities with Kate’s 9-point list in shared in this week’s episode? When it comes to the preoccupations and worries that plagued her from 13-19, it’s a hormonal ride through Clearasil pads, MSN Messenger, three hour long phone calls and waiting to successfully fill a B-cup.

Were the words ‘I’m bored’ as incendiary in your childhood home as in ours?

From ‘only boring people get bored’ to having LITERALLY not thing to do, we discussed the way being bored in the 90s was a totally different boredom that is possible to achieve now.

We also considered the catastrophe that would have been lockdown life back then - before WiFi, iPhones or even text messages that cost less than 12p per send.

On this week’s Songs About Podcast, Kate chose to explore teenage feelings through punk, rock and pure pop: a trifecta of first love, first lust and having a baby’s brain in an adult body.

On Songs About Being a Teenager, Allana chose some classic tracks that illustrate the age of anxiety, fear, lust, laziness and hormones.

And we just had to sneak in a seminal Britney classic at the end...

🔫Seventeen - The Sex Pistols

🗽Seventeen - Sharon Van Etten

👯‍♀️Nineteen - Tegan and Sara

👩‍👦I’m not a girl, not yet a woman - Britney Spears

🔞I'm 18 - Alice Cooper

🕺🏼Teenage Kicks - The Undertones

🛌Teenage Dream - Katy Perry