The Children of the Revolution: The 10 Best Songs Ever Written By Teenagers (2023)

Reflecting on the "beautiful death of James Dean", Yukio Mishima wrote: "Greek mythology tells how Achilles was forced to choose between a long inglorious life and a glorious young death. Without hesitation, he chose the latter. Surely everyone except the most prosaic of men would do the same if given a choice early in life." While this is not a notion anyone should tolerate, there is indeed a sense of accomplishment in youthful triumph that fades with age. Or maybe it's the reality that achievements aren't so easy to come by when your reserve of green enthusiasm is shattered by the hammering of hard knocks and the arrival of safe, cushioned comfort.youth culturestems from this proposition.

Mishima argues that “each of us secretly hopes that our life story will be immortalized in song or, for Alexander the Great, in stone. According to his decree, all statues must be made only in the likeness of himself when he was 21 years old. It seems strange that as adulthood approaches, we prematurely wrestle with the premonition of creating a beautiful legacy. It may be a holdover from a time when our lifespans were perilous, but the result of this fateful blunder of youth is that it has prompted a number of young stars to take life by the horns and ride the bull to death. glory.

Youth movements preserve our culture. One could even argue with the general rule that nothing really important has ever been mortgaged. If you look at the rise of pop culture, the basic steps were all propagated by pockmarked teenagers or those in their early 20s. Bob Dylan was 21 when he changed the world with himbob dylan book. The Beatles were considered the scene's greatest statesmen when they broke away from stereo sound.paprika sergeantbefore reaching the second half of the 20s. And most of the N.W.A. they were just 23 years old when they launched the hip-hop movement in 1988.

This touch of vibrancy shines through in the masterpieces of the younger generation in the list below. Each of the songs we've chosen is infused with youthful enthusiasm in one way or another. Some of them will make you question your own mindless teenage existence, while these protégés grappled with existentialism in verses of wax while you were busy scraping together a few bucks to try and win over Mentos in a bubbly pop game for laughs at the explosion. of resulting foam or launch yourself into the same corner of your favorite field that, for some unknown reason, you never ventured beyond.

Top 10 Songs Ever Written By Teens:

"I bet you look good on the dance floor" - Arctic Monkeys

I have always been a firm believer that children's movies should have a star rating given by a child:trollsIt wasn't made for the same guy who gave it to Andrei Tarkovsky.stalkerFive stars on an essay on obsolescence, it's just a different audience. Fortunately, Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys knew exactly what the boys needed to unleash the latest saga in the never-ending story of rock 'n' roll renaissance: after all, he would know he was one. And its frenetic pastiche of drunken youth culture drips with the seedy miasma of lived authenticity that only an 18-year-old could muster.

As any 18-year-old would, he has since tried to distance himself from his old-school poetry, labeling the classic "a bit of shit." He needn't have worried though, he wasn't tainted with the same youthful artistic regret so many of us face. The track is really successful. It takes a unique type of character to combine the aura of spicy vodkas with nods to Shakespeare and Duran Duran simultaneously, and this epic anthem remains a paragon of his stingy individualism to this day. It really is the pinnacle of the indie dance floor, duly thwarted by the feather of a voyeur whose feet seem glued to the carpet, a bit to the "scene" left.

"This Day" – Jackson Browne

The official story is that Jackson Browne wrote this song when he was only 16 years old. Yet the poignant blend of experiential wisdom and world-weariness contained in this ethereal reminder of things bygone points to only one pet theory: it was actually written by one of his guardian parents, who was helping his son with A homework. This passionate caretaker was clearly going through an emotional whirlwind, and she vented her troubles on him in the catharsis of a musical sigh.

It's the best we can hope for, because at the end of the day, hearing lines like "These days I shine to think hard about the things I forgot to do" from a 16-year-old is a painful reality that belies the song's sincerity. Are we somehow supposed to think this anthem for underprivileged ex-swingers is referring to a kid kicking up dust on the swing set after a three-week relationship ended in a playground brawl? No, I do not have. Even Charlie Brown wasn't smart enough for that level of withered wit; this just has to be the sad breath of a recovering romantic tending to some geraniums and turning through the years once more.

"Hometown Glory" – Adele

It's a universal truth that is rarely acknowledged that when our world is suddenly covered in headphones, we all have little movies in our heads. This fictional cinematic tour of a city engulfed in a New Wave drizzle is generally a very dull but wonderfully poetic scene. Adele captured that essence perfectly at the tender age of 16 with Howetown Glory, a masterpiece she calls "the first song I ever wrote from start to finish."

"It was kind of me and my mum that we didn't agree on where I should go to university. Because although I initially wanted to go to Liverpool, I changed my mind and wanted to go to London for university. But since I like to stay in home and I'm very dependent on my mum, she still wanted me to go to Liverpool," Adele explained. "So in that way, it was kind of a protest song about memories, good or bad, of your hometown."

"Mi Cherie Amour" - Stevie Wonder

There's a Ludacris theory that Stevie Wonder isn't actually blind, and while I'd never believe that troubling claim, I'd be happy to win a tinfoil hat with anyone who posits that he was actually born before 1950. Hey, there's no other way. . to explain the enormous talent he displayed by becoming the youngest person to top the charts at 13 years old. After that, he too would age beyond his years in moral battles against Motown like he did.risked his young careerin support of the civil rights movement and dropped the strictly apolitical label of Berry Gordy.

During his Motown years, however, the nurturing influence of some of the era's greatest songwriters certainly shines through. Along with Sylvia Moy and Henry Cosby, she created a love song that was sealed with the kiss of Detroit soul perfection. The original gist of the song comes from a 1966 song Wonder wrote in less than an hour in honor of his girlfriend. It then went through the fashionable filter of a French twist, polished with the help of his peers, and now stands as one of the most riveting pieces of head-curing sincerity ever gleefully squeezed onto illuminated vinyl volume. .

"Sturmhöhe" - Kate Bush

Sometimes the green of youthful ingenuity is essential to change the course of history. Any seasoned songwriter in his early twenties would know that crying in a whirlwind of flowery mysticism at the height of the punk revolt was undoubtedly a failure. The critics were right when Kate Bush released her literary anthem Wuthering Heights, which she wrote when she was 18 years old.the guardcalled it a "strange combination of art and non-art", and theNMEsaid that "[Kate Bush] has all the villainous aspects of David Bowie in the Mainman era."

Yet while challenging the zeitgeist style, she stayed true to herself, and that shone like an inspiring Azagai of happy sunshine. After all, wasn't punk just about expressing individualism? Bush's considerable talent may have drawn her from the snarling side of that movement, but expressiveness is a tenet her music upheld to the last degree, and it is still refreshing to this day.

'Cebollas verdes' - Booker T. & the MG's

"Green Onions" was not only produced on the spot by 18-year-old Booker T. Jones, it also came about almost by accident. Along with the Stax Records house band, Booker T. Jones sat behind the Hammond organ and while they waited for a mugged Billy Lee Riley, they improvised a silly exercise and ultimately created a sound that helped define the era.

The band realized that they had created a believable B-side for "Behave Yourself", but nothing more. It turns out that they really took advantage of the rumor that the counterculture movement was defibrillating. It was an adrenaline rush that was contagious and suddenly the Hammond organ was everywhere. However, it's hard to say that its use has always been better than this random magic. As dance floor Ram Dass' Deee Lite once said, sometimes the beat really is in the heart.

"Glory" - you

At 18, Van Morrison was the young songwriter at the helm of Them. He was an introverted and reserved boy. Music turned out to be an invaluable outlet for him. That feeling of breaking the shackles of shyness rumbles like a growl in the proto-punk bombardment of "Gloria."

He wrote the song in the summer of 1963, when rock 'n' roll was just starting to rock. In retrospect, it's a song that bears the signature of many of the songs to come. This isn't some radio-friendly joke story, it's a sultry growl of youthful lust delivered with the unabashed sass that conservatives call the music of the devil. Well, God knows there's a twisted soul in this pioneering ditty.

"Hand in Glove" – The Smiths

The beauty of The Smiths is related to the spiritual dichotomy of their constitution. The band's creative leaders, Morrissey and Johnny Marr, come from opposite sides of the spectrum. When they started, Morrissey was in his early 20s and already had a tired apathy. This was exalted in his hymns as smug prose, a dramatic hybrid somewhere between the Byronic romanticism of youth and the weary cynicism of a lost soul at odds with the world.

Marr, however, was a 19-year-old wrestler, four and a half years Morrissey's junior, and he wanted to fix the world by crushing the era's forced synth sedation with a spiritual guitar salvo. So, when he broke the "heads up" riff, he ran right over to Morrissey's house with a little tape and showed him his work. When they officially begin recording, the very collision of sonic enthusiasm and Morrissey's restraint of dismissive wit is an impressive force.

"Okay" - super weed

When Alright was released in 1995, Gaz Coombes had just turned 19. However, with the successful album, he is credited with hinting at the transience of our younger days and the importance of savoring them: at 20, he was back in the local indie clubs in no time.

Ironically, young Coombes was actually reminiscing about his tender days. "It wasn't written as an anthem," he explained. "It's not meant to be a rallying cry for our generation. 'We're young/We're green...' isn't about being 19, it's about being 13 or 14 and just dating and drinking. And that, ultimately, is The beauty of it all. The reason it's so effective has to do with the fact that it's unaffected by any precautions. It moves forward at a thunderous pace matched only by the prelapsarian certainty of youth. Mortgage miles from adulthood are still a few cities to the right.

"Hound Dog" – Jerry Leiber and Mike Stroller

The rock 'n' roll script is mystically shrouded in mist, but "Hound Dog" is certainly a central cat's eye to its journey, glowing with more purpose than most. It's a solid dose of swagger and poise and not much else. That's not to say he lacks substance, just that he's brought a new kind of charisma to the forefront of music.

So it seems fitting that he was inspired by a former blues star. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stroller were just 19 years old when Big Mama Thornton's skill hit their respective sideburns. "When we saw Big Mama, she knocked me out. She looked like the meanest, biggest, saltiest girl you've ever seen," Leiber said. So he sped back to Stroller's apartment, and the pair, pumped with this new rock song, played "Hound Dog" in 15 minutes.

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