For all the boys I longed to kiss

For All The Boys I Longed to Kiss

Entered into Vocal's Teen Angst Playlist Challenge: Share a playlist of your favorite angsty teenage songs, and tell us why they were an important part of your adolescence.

For all the boys I longed to kiss

there was a song

... and sometimes a whole album (I'm looking at you Gerard Way)

Helena by My Chemical Romance

I think I may have kissed Gerard Way to every song in the My Chemical Romance discography. He doesn't know it yet, but he still owes me a Black Parade serenade. I was fourteen, and these were the times where I favoured men I couldn't have over the boys in front of me. Perhaps because it was easier to pine after someone who couldn't pine back.

I had no sense of sexuality then; I was a late bloomer, and the boys preferred my friends over a glance at me. So I sunk into the leather seats of the school-bus and listened to punk-rock, instead.

I slept easiest on nights where I was escorted to bed on a rose-trimmed float drifting through a ramshackled town. But in the mornings I daydreamed I was one of those girls lucky enough to be pulled on stage during a concert. Becoming the unassuming muse of a noughties punk band was my fantasy of choice, so needless to say, I'm of the opinion that My Chemical Romance created teen angst.

Kiss the Girl by Ashley Tisdale

I learned later that year - or perhaps it was the next - that it was okay to picture yourself as the subject of desire, as opposed to the demure freshman waiting to have male attention bestowed upon her.

I wasn't ready to act on it yet; I remained meek for many a term, but through the escapism of a Disney song I was able to picture myself in a beautiful dress I was too shy to wear, or applying lipstick which I dared not do in my waking life.

Through the help of Kiss the Girl I turned my meek indifference to flirtation. Don't get me wrong, I was still dreadfully shy. Fifteen year old me thought that glancing at someone was the peek of salacious invitation. The idea of talking to a crush? Wow, slow it down, boys - I'm a good Christian girl.

In My Head by Jason Derulo

Okay, I'm not actually a good Christian girl. Especially if Jason Derulo is involved. Nearing the end of my high-school years I dared myself to try something a little more... uh... suggestive.

For drama class I'd been assigned The Importance of Being Earnest, which meant that little old me had to perform innuendo - in front of the class. Needless to say, I was terrified. My friends revelled in this forced trip down sexuality lane and cackled as I struggled to form words like "engagement" and "relations".

I blushed internally when I heard Jason's hit, In My Head, and when I saved it on my iPod it felt like a well-kept secret. It took me a long while before I could listen to the heavy breathing at the start of the second verse without worrying a swat team would descend and whisk me away to chastity-camp.

Self Esteem by The Offspring

It's the end of high-school - the Prom after party, and can you believe it - she kissed a boy! No, just kidding. But I did let him kiss me. My lips were sealed, but I leant into him as his lips trailed down my neck for the entire duration of Self Esteem.

My friends and I liked to picture ourselves as deviants, because we favoured the grunge crowd over the preppy afterparty by the beach. Most of the crew passed a joint in a self-made hotbox, but I tried my rebellion with a Vodka Cruiser. Couples paired off and made out to the likes of Radiohead, Nirvana, and The Offspring. My guy of choice rocked a turquoise mohawk and wore studs on his leather jacket.

I never kissed him during that long weekend, but I pictured doing so for many years afterwards. Isn't it strange how 'the one that got away' can be reserved for a boy who I didn't much fancy?

Vienna by The Fray

There was a growing discomfort in me, from when I turned fifteen, that cemented itself as pit in my stomach a year after graduating from high-school.

I'd been an observer to the ways girls were treated; the things boys would say about us in a time when it was consequence free. It wasn't until I grew into my body that I was on the receiving end. A family friend, who called himself "Uncle" had known me since I was eight, but now watched me with different eyes and found the word 'bitch' falling easy from his lips.

The unease crystallized when I bore witness to a woman whose husband subjected her to sexually salacious berates and 'jokes' in front of friends and visitors, such as myself.

The seamless welding of hope to melancholy made The Fray the perfect balm for my discomfort. Of course, it was never was fully erased, but Vienna - in particular - aided me most.

On Your Side by The Veronicas

Let's flip the disc for a happier tune. Here's one for the girls, of which there's been a few.

I'm going to pretend for a second that Kylie Minogue's Red Blooded Woman simply fascinated me so much as a child because of the, aah... lyricism - yes, that works - but that is not the song I want to share with you today.

On Your Side by The Veronica's captured me not with the lyrics, but with the music video. Straight after high-school, I'd met and fallen irrevocably in lust with a girl who was the spitting image of Ruby Rose. I'd never considered it before, but I finally understood what Kylie Minogue had been trying to tell me for years. And what Hayley Kiyoko's Girls Like Girls would continue to convince me of in the time coming.

1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins

Still interested in boys despite all the pain, and reminded of my trashy senior years, I fell in love to the familiar grunge of The Smashing Pumpkins.

I'd met a man at a house party and we stayed up till dawn talking in a stream-of-consciousness. He played the guitar, and sang like Billy Corgan. I stopped lamenting the boy with the blue Mohawk, and shifted my affections to the one with the unkempt curls, falling in a mess over his blue eyes.

I couldn't have him at the time, so I cried my angst to the tune of 1979, Disarm, and Tonight Tonight. I'd tell him much later - laying with him in his bed - that I fell in love with him that very first night, and it was true.

Scar Tissue by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Nothing lasts forever, and the curtains were drawn on my Billy Corgan romance to a mixture of jeers and blown-noses. The drapery was caught on an unslicked rod a few times, but when they eventually did close I let out a deep cathartic breath.

I was a woman now versed in the realms of love, lust, and passion. Her angst resolved for the very first time, and now free to do with it whatever she wished. Reminiscent of my teen years, I favoured fantasy over the reality that was on offer. I was twenty-two when I began to hear Scar Tissue differently. I pictured a man behind a counter bar, drying the last of his pint glasses as a dark-haired woman sat by, chewing her bottom lip.

This song still gets me hot and bothered when I hear it lilting down the city streets. It's not so much that I wish to be that woman at the bar. It's more that I long to watch the scene play out like a movie; two strangers hitting it off at a hotel-bar and taking it upstairs for a one-night stand.

Dizzy On The Comedown by Turnover

Would you come here and spin with me

I've been dying to get your dizzy

I was ready to date again at twenty-three, but my angst was reserved for the connection I had lost with myself. Dizzy on The Comedown captured the fun and the meaning I had lost in my life.

It still serves as a reminder - on the days where I'm feeling dissociated - to connect with myself through memories, dancing, and looking up at the stars. The songs that inspired me during my teens were the one's that had me watching myself through the eyes of others.

But, the one's that speak to me now are those that remind me to live for myself. Unapologetic and unafraid to subvert the expectations I'd previously confined myself to. It's not easy - because I trained myself to live for others - but I continue to unlearn the rules I lived by when I was trying my best to be lovable, and to revisit the songs that made an impact with a new found appreciation of the girl I was, and the woman I would become.

So here it is, my nine songs of teenage and adult Angst

Thanks for reading!