Playlist from my Teenage Self

We've all heard the story of the angst ridden, rebellious teen, and I personally remember those years quite fondly, being able to express your identity through a dress sense that doesn't fit the societal norms, listening to music that gets you funny looks on the bus. The urge to not fit in is strong with this one.

Admit it, being unique, different, yourself, is much more enticing and interesting than conforming to the lifestyle rules everybody else conforms to. But I'm getting slightly off track here, we're talking about the music more than anything here, as a teenager and even now as an adult I prefer to listen to the alternative, punk-rock genre above all. Bands such as My Chemical Romance and Escape the Fate, helped shape my teenage identity and greatly affected my dress sense. As I know it did for a lot of other people out there.

Now onto the playlist, below I'm going to go through a list of the most influential bands from my teenage years, which spanned from 2007-2013 for context, any effect they had on the music genres evolution and how they affected style choices of people like myself back in our teenage years, and even more as we've grown up.

I'm going to throw you right into this with my all time favourite band, My Chemical Romance, which you probably guessed from above, MCR as we always called them, the ultimate Emo Punk-Rock band, bringing out a range of theatrics at every concert, a mix of grim and gore, bouncy dance anthems and emotional melodies, MCR was a band like no other, versatile in it's unique genre non – conforming approach to music.

“Awake and unafraid, asleep or dead?” - just one of the many chilling lyrics from My Chemical Romances very long discography. This one would defiantly be at the top of my playlist as a teenager, 'Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance'.

Although my all time favourite song by them, that I still like to listen to today is 'Vampires Will Never Hurt You', with the hushed haunting lyrics, "And as always, innocent like roller coasters. Fatality is like ghosts in snow and you have no idea what you're up against, because I've seen what they look like. Becoming perfect as if they were sterling silver chainsaws going cascading”.

Moving onto the next band in my teenage playlist, I'm sure everyone's heard of the grunge band Nirvana, well when I was younger I was overwhelmingly obsessed with the band and the conspiracy surrounding the untimely death of their lead singer Kurt Cobain. Which I still stand by the fact that he was murdered. But don't get me onto that or we'll be here all day.

I know Nirvana will have been on every angst ridden teens top music list since the early 90s, most people know songs like 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', or 'Come as you are', which are a few of their most popular songs. One of the songs I've loved for a long time and resonates with me the most is “Where did you sleep last night?”, which Kurt wrote about his wife Courtney Love deceiving him.

A band that fuelled a rebellious part of my teenage years is The Pretty Reckless, fronted by the stunning Taylor Momsen, who's reckless style I tried to replicate back in the day, releasing songs like 'Make me Wanna Die', 'Heaven Knows' and my personal favourite, 'Zombie'. Which were always belted out by me and my best friend back in college, while we were in fact supposed to be studying, but we both had our own little room together where we could sit and edit our Media work, we just entered the creative head space by playing music and dancing around like crazy people.

Another band we would listen too while we worked was Escape the Fate, and like all teenage girls, we had major crushes on our favourite band members, this band was one of the biggest inflictions for this, I crushed hard on the bass player Max Green, and she became obsessed with both of the vocalists Ronnie Radke and Craig Mabbitt. Which later span onto us following Ronnie's other band Falling in Reverse. Unlike the other bands I listened to back then this particular range fell into a subgenre called Screamo music. Where the vocalist is able to stretch their vocal cords to create some primal like melodic screams. These sounds helped to calm the teenage brain by combating all of the noise already going on in my head. Funnily enough, Escape the Fate wouldn't be the band it is if it wasn't for My Chemical Romance hosting a competition years ago.

Other bands that follow along similar genre's, that I listened to as a teenager, include a few that aren't all that well known, but I'm sure they'll be well known amongst their fanbase. This includes my all time favourite independent band Blacklisted Me, and others like Get Scared, Black Veil Brides, Yashin, Asking Alexandria, and much, much more.

To wind up here are my top 10 playlist from my teenage self:

1. 'Famous Last Words – My Chemical Romance.'

2. 'Smells like Teen Spirit – Nirvana.'

3. 'Reprobate Romance – Blacklisted Me'

4. 'Zombie' – The Pretty Reckless

5. 'Vampires Will Never Hurt You – My Chemical Romance.'

6. 'Not good enough for the truth in cliché – Escape The Fate.'

7. 'If only you knew Voodoo like I do – Get Scared.'

8. 'Stand Up – Yashin.'

9. 'Note to Self – From First to Last.'

10. 'The Gunsling – Black Veil Brides.'

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