10 Songs of Teen Angst

blink-182's fourth full-length studio album, Take off Your Pants and Jacket, contains all the juvenile dick jokes you expect coming from an album with such a title. Love or hate blink-182 (I love them), it cannot be denied that their catalogue has some serious hits (one of these tunes will make an appearance on this list today).

The opening song from this album, Anthem Part Two, opens with a riff from Tom that can only be described as incredibly sick. More importantly to the purpose of this article, there is a line in the second verse that goes "corporate leaders, politicians / kids can't vote, adults elect them / laws that rule the school and workplace / signs that caution, sixteen's unsafe". Obviously, this sentiment has been expressed countless times before and after, but blink has had an incredible impact on my relationship with music, so that's the example we're going to build off.

As everyone else does, I remember a lot of my teenage years being awkward and embarrassing, and I cannot fathom how I would only wear pants that were either way too baggy or way too tight. It made it very hard to skate when your pants kept catching on your trucks or you were continuously blowing the crotch out of your skin tight jeans every time you landed.

But that is neither here nor there. Very often teenage ideals, fashion, thoughts, habits, and in particular music, are written off because a teenager is "just an angsty teen" and will "grow out of it".

Coming back around to that line from Anthem Part Two, it really speaks to how a lot of teenagers feel. It honestly probably shapes the way a lot of former teens feel. The world is controlled by rich corporate juggernauts and politicians who take bribes from those rich corporate juggernauts. These people and groups then make the rules that force people to behave and act in their desired manner at school and work and within society. As a bright-eyed idealist of a teenager, you would probably seen a problem with that. That teenager is labeled as a trouble-maker or a delinquent for thinking differently than is expected of them.

A lot of adults probably feel this way too, and a lot probably try to push it down deep inside because it's really heavy to have that feeling weighing you down. These thoughts particularly affect teenagers because they feel like they can't make changes to the world, mostly because at every turn they are told so and reminded that their opinions don't really matter.

Music for me was a great place to explore these thoughts and feelings. Whether it was songs about being bored, not finding love or losing it, feeling out of place, being sad at the world because it can be a terrible place sometimes, these topics speak to me and so many others as teenagers because they are very real human feelings, and hearing them as a teenager gives you a warm reminder that despite what it seems like sometimes, you are not alone in your thoughts, others feel the same way and have put it to songs that quite frankly rule.

There were two broad categories of angsty music that resonated with me in my teen years. The first was that of heartbreak and misery, the second was the underlying message that not all was right in the world.

Category one included songs of sadness, pining over lost loves and missed opportunities, which struck a chord in my teenage heart. Every verse always seemed to be about that cute girl in biology class that was super friendly but just never seemed to notice you in that way. Being a teen boy was hard, what with having all these emotions yet also trying to pretend those emotions don't exist.

Category two included the songs that basically said, "the world should be beautiful, but for some reason, sometimes it sucks!"

Today we're gonna talk about category two.

Each song in this playlist, while being generally sick musically, also holds an underlying (sometimes extremely obvious) message that I believe played a part in forming my worldview today as an adult. At the time, these may have just been catchy tunes that I used to destroy my eardrums while skating parking lots, but looking back now I can see how I relate to them on a deeper, moral level.

1) Refusal - by Strike Anywhere

I first heard this song, the first song I ever heard from Strike Anywhere, on the soundtrack for Tony Hawk's Underground. Before streaming services and before even YouTube was big, all the new bands I heard about either came from Tony Hawk games or skate videos. That and trying to read the scribbled liner notes from bands I already liked to find out what they were into.

Strike Anywhere quickly became a very important band for me. They covered topics like calling out political atrocities, racial inequality, sexism, and worker's rights. Their songs are fast, melodic, and hella catchy.

Refusal is the third track off their first album Change is a Sound and can easily be described as relentless. I've always interpreted the lyrics as calling for the need of love and people coming together to end systems of oppression. With blistering guitar slides and screamed lyrics, the song asks you to fight against those systems even if they don't affect you directly, you should stand beside those that are oppressed.

2) Sexism is real: wrestling is not - by Closet Monster

So I'm about to get very Canadian on you, dear reader. Closet Monster was a punk band in the late 90s to early 2000s. Their singer Mark Spicoluk, with involvement from the rest of the band, formed the record label Underground Operations, which at different points featured acts like Protest the Hero and Lights. At least a couple of the dudes from Closet Monster for a time formed Avril Lavigne's backing band.

So now that you're caught up on the history of Ajax, Ontario, let's talk about the song a little. This band was never subtle with their themes, being quite outspoken on matters of injustice in the world and blasting it into your brain with catchy punk songs - this one in particular starts slow and continuously gets faster and faster, enforcing the urgency of the message. The title of Sexism is real: wrestling is not easily sums up the topic of the song. I'm not going to pretend that thirteen year old me fully grasped what being male, white and privileged really meant, but listening back on those lines and that sentiment from the song, I do hope that I have become much better at acknowledging this in my own life.

3) You Can Have this Microphone When you Pry it from my Cold, Dead Fingers - by We Are The Union

The in your face title of this track sums up the message of this song quite well. We Are the Union presents a song that quite bluntly states "we are, we are not just screaming for attention". A fairly strong sentiment that appeals to a teenage listener who might not know or be comfortable expressing this. Like I alluded to earlier, I believe a lot of teen angst stems from people telling them that they should learn to form their own opinions, but then not actually taking those opinions seriously. This song straight up refuses to let that happen.

I spent a good chunk of my teen years heavily into punk and hardcore that was infused with a touch of ska. We Are the Union is a band I learned about in my later teens and early into university. Their repertoire encompasses the urgency of punk and hardcore and combines it with the infectious pop sensibilities of ska, all while promoting a positive message and denouncing the bullshit of the world.

4) Career Opportunities - by The Clash

To be honest, I rarely felt a need to rebel against my parents. I've been lucky enough to have people in my life who genuinely want what's best for me. My dad had a big impact on my musical tastes.

One day when I was young, probably not even a teenager yet, I went to my dad and asked him about The Clash. I was eager to show off I knew about these old guys who were playing punk rock like the bands I liked. Boy, did I get schooled that day. He talked to me about how a lot of the stuff I was into was influenced by bands like The Clash, and I was taught that day about the Blues that came decades before and it being the foundation for so much music.

Very importantly, because I showed a passing interest in this band because it was catchy and fast and they sang cool, my dad taught me about the importance of hearing what stories music would tell. Which leads me to the lyrics of Career Opportunities, which as I got a little older and entered the working world I came to take to heart. These lyrics I've always understood to be voicing discontent of working for employers who treat you like a tool and take advantage of you. This type of thing very much speaks to a teenager who is told that they have to take every "opportunity" that they are offered, even if in reality it is a thinly-veiled threat. It tells them that they should have the right to stand up for better conditions and a better life for themselves.

5) Shades of Grey - by Braille

I first heard Braille rap on a skate video in the early half of the 2000s, and was so drawn into it I had to go pick up his CD that shares its name with this song.

Shades of Grey is the final track on the album, and over fifteen years later I still get goosebumps every time I hear it. Right off the opening beat, the song is larger than life, as are the themes Braille deftly tackles through his rap.

The content of the song is at times both highly relatable and highly personal, and even the tone alternates from moments where he feels hopeless but manages to find it again. The very last verses were and are particularly poignant for me: "I'll do my best to make the right decisions / until the day Heaven takes me away / I'm gonna make the most of life even with the shades of grey". That hits a teen's heart pretty hard, how could I have that delivered to my soul and not immediately want to be a better person?

6) Science Fiction - by Rufio

I cannot exaggerate the amount of times this song ran on repeat on my iPod in high school. The guitar riff starts and then the song never lets up, the drums just barrel along, and it just gets faster and faster. There are such beautiful harmonies as well.

To top it off, the song is about a major issue that plagues teenagers the world over, even if you don't want to admit it to yourself: body issues. Everyone goes through this, believing they have to adhere to a made up standard of beauty, that even those that are considered the standard are not comfortable in, or don't feel good enough about themselves. This track encourages the listener to see themselves for the beauty that they are.

7) Wake the Dead - by Comeback Kid

Time to get Canadian again! This time we're headed to Winnipeg, Manitoba for Comeback Kid. The song itself has a lot of weird shit going on, in the best possible way, and oh my God the chunky breakdown and the gang vocals toward the end give me chills every time. Every part of this song amalgamates into an anthem that pulls people together in the pit and has them singing arm in arm.

Like a lot of good hardcore, this comes from a place full of heart, dragging people out of their despair and encouraging them to get through tough times and not let regrets pull them down. I think this one always came up on my playlists just because the intense musicality of it combined with it's message of getting past the bad always brought a little wave of happiness over me.

8) Shoot Down the Stars - by Gym Class Heroes

Musically a bit of a shift from Wake the Dead, but really a lot of the same sentiment can be found in Shoot Down the Stars by Gym Class Heroes. Travie McCoy raps about how he worked his way to where he got, and encourages the listener that they can do the same.

There will always be tough times and hard things to go through, and even when you succeed, it won't always be how you expected or wanted it to happen. Everybody gets scared and nervous and worries about failing, but that's okay. The important thing is that you keep trying to do better, always.

9) The Impression that I Get - by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

I don't know if I've ever met anyone who has heard this song and disliked it. The transition from the clean guitar verses to when the distortion is turned up for the sing-along choruses. The horns! Damn those horns are lovely.

As radio friendly as the song is, it also holds a very important message. It asks the question "have you ever had the odds stacked up so high?" and elaborates on this that while you may not have had to deal with particular struggles, you most definitely know and care about someone who has.

I have always found The Impression That I Get beautiful because while it does want us to be able to overcome obstacles and come out the other side better, it doesn't mean anything if we are not willing to help others do the same.

10) Lemmings - by blink-182

This song was and always will be a big deal for me. There was a moment in my early twenties when I walked out of a bank after completing a work assessment. There were two kids skating a ledge in the parking lot, completely oblivious to the world around them. That is, until they noticed the weird guy with a briefcase staring at them. That weird guy wasn't even staring at them, he had got lost in his own mind for a moment, thinking back to when he was that kid skating the ledge in the parking lot.

This song captures the feeling of growing up and moving on, from friends, from what you used to do for fun, from who you were. Through the end of the song, Mark takes a look inwards, acknowledging that we don't have to move on from and lose people and things we loved, that we do that to ourselves when we think we "have" to grow out of it.

Musically, Scott drums out of control in such a good way, while Tom's bittersweet guitar tone matches Mark's intense delivery of the lyrics looking back on his life up to this point. I usually feel at least a few tears welling up when I put this song on.

Lemmings is from Dude Ranch, an album that is arguably a near-perfect work of art, so vividly captures emotions I felt as I left my teenage years behind me. As emotional as the song makes me feel, it instills a sense of positivity, that you don't have to give up on some of the things you believed in as a teenager. It's a good thing to still be idealistic, and have hopes and dreams, and know that you still have so much to look forward to.

So there you have it. A collection of songs from my past that fueled questions about the world, developed my disdain for injustice, and helped me with the struggle against antagonistic forces of growing up. These select tracks, and so many others like them, were an extremely positive influence that left me with a hope that the world truly can be a better place.