Teen Angst 1997-1998

Teen Angst Playlist 1997 - 1998

by Hannah Murr

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3sut8ID92w5cmk8bZucwXj?si=uUnHsPCrQJOkezsXlf0YXw

Everlong - Foo Fighters

The Rain (Supa Fly) - Missy Elliott

Doo Wap (That Thing) - Ms. Lauryn Hill

Dammit - Blink 182

Fly Away - Lenny Kravitz

Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind

Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls

Karma Police - Radiohead

I Want You - Savage Garden

Crush - Jennifer Paige

Torn - Natalie Imbruglia

Almost Doesn’t Count - Brandy

Your Woman - White Town

Tubthumping - Chumbawamba

Closing Time - Semisonic

Bob Dylan is one of the greatest musicians and songwriters to have ever lived on this Earth. Who wants to argue with that? I did a high school English oral argument on why I thought so back in 9th grade. I played some of his songs on a boombox for the class as we sat in a mobile-trailer classroom outside the overcrowded main building back in 1998. I played ‘Lay Lady Lay’ and ‘Tambourine Man’ but no one in the class looked to be too impressed. I speedily wrapped up my presentation and walked back to my desk very much regretting my choice of subject matter. I thought he was cool and vintage, but it didn’t translate well to my peers.

Today as a 37-year-old woman, I still love Bob Dylan and I’m able to feel proud of it regardless of whether or not my peers agree. As a teenager growing up in the late 90’s my physical and social appearance was directly related to my feeling of coolness and overall self-worth. So when I bombed that Bob Dylan presentation I felt like I had to do something good to make up for it. I made a playlist. I used my Dad’s computer to burn 20 CD’s (compact discs). Now I had 20 CD’s with all of the coolest songs from the years 1997-1998. My Dad helped me burn the CD’s and I set out to school the next day ready to redeem my image and peacock my ‘real’ musical tastes into the fray. It went over well with my friends, but maybe some people chucked theirs, I’ll never know…

There was however a recent story about Bob Dylan on a Foo Fighters documentary. Apparently Dylan was back stage at the Foo Fighters show and he was so impressed with the performance of the song Everlong that he asked Dave Grohl to teach him how he played it! That’s a huge compliment to Dave’s musicianship and the song Everlong is definitely a jam. That’s why it tops this playlist of my favorite teen angst melodies from the 1997-98 rock/pop/rap genres. Dave is a master of 90’s rock. The iconic drummer from Nirvana, lead singer and guitarist in Foo Fighters, and more recently in Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures. In the song Everlong, Dave laments a relationship going well but not wanting it to end, and wondering …” if anything could ever be this good again.” The most iconic and definitely my personal favorite line in any of Grohl’s tunes are in the last lines in Everlong, “The only thing I’ll ever ask of you, you gotta promise not to stop when I say when.” How philosophical can we get in 1997? This pushed the boundaries of my perception then and now, and if Bob likes it, we like it too.

Next up is a road trip jam from Missy Elliott. In this drive-along, sing-along, old school favorite, The Rain (Supa Fly), Missy can’t stand the rain against her window and neither can we. At 13-14 years old, I was saying “let me outside” to play with sticks, rocks, and a hula hoop or pogo-stick. Me and Missy (also my little sis’ name) had things to do and people to see in the neighborhood. Enough with the rain already. And while we’re at it, enough with all those rules about how late we can stay outside. After those street lights come on, we’ll be back inside to eat our mac and cheese and watch Full House and Family Matters, (insert teen angst eye-roll here)!

Please welcome to the playlist Ms. Lauryn Hill with her foreboding rap on jezebels and the guys who better watch out for them, Doo Wap (That Thing). You know some girls are only about that thing. ‘That thing, that thing, that thi-I-ing.’ I was singing along to this song word for word at 14 years old. I had no idea ‘that thing’ was sex. I was so blessed to be naive and I cherish those days of singing along to the words while knowing so little about their context. Watch out, Blink 182 is also pretty bad in content and context and they are coming up next.

Welcome to the playlist my absolute favorite band of these angsty teen years! I saw Blink-182 no less than 5 times live in concert from 1998-2002. This song, Dammit, is filled with fast-paced guitar riffs, California vibes, and the lament of having to grow up and be an adult. Don’t worry Mark, Tom, and Travis, you three will stay forever young in the hearts of your super fans, Dammit!

Mr. Lenny Kravitz graces the playlist here with his yearning, burning, guitar slides and angelic voice. In this jam, Fly Away, he reflects on our shared desires to get away from everything that is troublesome. This is a perfect song to show the angsty, borderline whiny voice of a late 90’s youth rebelling against their boomer parents, wanting to spread their wings and fly towards independence. Little did we know, there would be many days as adults we’d wish to only be young again and free of responsibility.

Have you ever in your life put your fingers into your ears to avoid listening to someone speak and made this noise to drown them out, “doo-do-doo-do, doo-do-doo-do”? The song Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind perfectly fits the vibe and angst of my teenagers, just wanting to be left alone. No, we are not listening to you. We’re just trying to survive, express ourselves, and make out with other cute young people. Until we break up with them for another beautiful young person and say “goodbye” and “doo-do-doo-do” doo-do-doo-do” we’re on to the next one. This song is a perfect mirror for those who are never quite pleased with anything in their own semi-charmed lives. Important Note: I just today realized this song is about taking bumps of narcotics, so KIDS DON’T DO DRUGS. You can still be angsty and stuff just don’t do what the musicians do to cope with those feelings. While we may feel like we need something else to help get us through life, as the song says, I think what we really need is to find our own strength from within. As a teen, I did not have enough perspective to understand this message and I mostly just liked the chorus, ‘doo-do-doo’.

What 90’s playlist would be complete without at least one Goo Goo Dolls song? Their name alone is suggestive of some dark and peculiar childhood angst. As a fourteen-year-old girl in middle school, I was generally struggling to define myself and readily making changes in my appearance and style. In the song Iris, we hear “I don’t want the world to see me, I don’t think that they’d understand’ and ‘I just want you to know who I am.” As teens, we’re conflicted, confused, and struggling to align our own perception of reality with how others see us. As a teen, I could have benefited from a lot more self-confidence. Sometimes in being so concerned about what others thought of me, I lost the most important view - of myself.

Radiohead is an alternative rock beast and generally undisputed force in the music industry. This 1997 Karma Police tune was a repeated regular on my Sony Discman during those middle school years. The song’s ethereal rock and the magical vibe were super fresh for the 90’s. It was like you knew you were listening to a song from the future. I would daydream about Radiohead’s lyric “this is what you get, when you mess with us… Karma Police.” I was just beginning to understand the idea of karma at thirteen, so the idea of Radiohead calling the futuristic Karma Police on all those middle school bullies that relentlessly picked on me.. that would have been truly magical.

Let’s pick up the pace a bit with Savage Garden and I Want You in the middle of the teen angst playlist. This song is full of synth-pop beats and an almost auctioneer-like singing of the main verses. I loved it in the 90’s because of the line “sweet like cherry cola”, that’s it. The song is about liking someone and not knowing if they are good for you or bad for you. Who are we kidding? No one cared at 13-14 we just knew we liked this song and cherry coke.

Our next musician might require a quick google search, it’s Jennifer Paige with the tune Crush. This one was perfect for my teen years when I crushed hard and obsessed over imaginary loves and celebrities. As the lyrics tell us “it’s just a little crush... it’s not like I faint every time we touch.” As a teen, just imagine touching your celebrity crush - in real life! That would be amazing and enough to get most teen's spirits lifted out of that angsty anger and into a better mood for bedazzling that jean jacket or decorating that washable doodle bear. In retrospect, this song has a good message of not being dependent upon the returned love of said crush. “It’s not like everything I do depends on you.” That line alone is a heart-breaker. Imagine your crush finally coming around and now you’re on to bigger and better things, after all, it was just ‘a little crush’.

And what do we do when we don’t know what to do? When we’re torn like Natalie Imbruglia was in Torn. “I’m all out of faith.. this is how I feel.” She laments while being naked on the floor and her love is later than expected, he's too late. This was an almost absurd image to imagine as a teenage girl. I really wanted to give Natalie Imbruglia a bathrobe or something to cover up with but I identified with her lyrics. Feeling left out and forgotten is very familiar to a teenager in the midst of a blended family and marriage to a new step-parent. That was exactly what was happening to me the year this song dropped. "I’m wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn.” I was 14 and moving into a new house with new people and I felt very torn between my old life and the new one that I didn’t like very much yet.

And like a breath of fresh air, Brandy graces our angsty playlist with Almost Doesn’t Count. Her raspy, soft voice and rhythmic lyrics blend beautifully with a Spanish guitar and an R&B vibe. “Maybe you’ll come running back babe.. you almost convinced me .. but everybody knows.. almost doesn’t count.” Brandy is an absolute icon of 90’s music and TV. I remember watching Moesha episode marathons regularly in amazement of her talent as a singer. Keep shining your light Brandy, you are the real star of the 90’s and of this playlist, only second to the giant glowing mass that is Dave Grohl!

This next tune might be a surprise for some but as a teen I absolutely loved it and I could recognize the strong LGBTQ message in it before anyone was really talking about that openly in 1997. This song, Your Woman by Engish rock band White Town, made me feel happy, prideful, and confident but I don’t exactly know why. It’s just a vibe and I liked the lyrics. They sing “I could never be your woman… I guess what they say is true.. I could never be the right kind of girl for you”, sung by a male vocalist Jyoti Mishra! This throwback jam is a shining example of one of the earliest hit records with a gender reversal perspective. The more I learn about it now, the more I love and respect this song.

Okay, it’s time to get in your bathtub and start thumping with something. We have another English rock band, Chumbawamba with Tubthumping. The random name and erratic lyrics are just part of the fun of this incredibly catchy tune. Sing along with me, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” Yeah! “You’re never going to keep me down.” This anthem of resilience and determined drinking is mildly inappropriate for teens but so are most of the other songs on the radio from 1997 to now. Let us all forget our worries and jam together to this motivational random anthem.

Rounding out my 1997-1998 teen angst playlist is a song most bars now use to stir the crowd just before closing time. That’s right, it’s Closing Time by Semisonic. As a teen, this song gave me major adulthood vibes. I could just close my eyes and imagine being 21 with a cool group of friends and partying until closing time in some pub, then getting stuck there with no ride home. The lyrics speak of a person drunkenly asking someone to take them home and I could only imagine the things that might happen afterward. Semisonic is the perfect band to end this playlist with the wrap-it-up vibes we need. These lyrics encourage us to appreciate the endings in life and to see them as new beginnings.

Thanks for taking this journey through time and music with me. I hope you were able to travel back in time to where you were during these great music releases. And if you weren’t born yet in 1997-1998 that is okay, now you have a list of 15 songs, 1 hour and 2 mins of classic rock to add to your Spotify library, enjoy!