They say that youth is wasted on the young. They say a lot of things, though, whoever they are.
Whatever song we hear when we’re 17 will feel like the most important track of our life. The psychologists call it ‘Anchoring’. The Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahnemann noted that even he, who coined the term, was not immune. If a student of his performed well on their first essay, he had them down as a good student. And the opposite applied.
Your youth is your youth. Sure, I might have marginally preferred to be born fifteen years earlier and enjoy a career where there was still money in advertising, it was all about the TV schedules and digital banners were just a glint in the eye of a yet-to-be-born customer experience strategist.
And I would have been 17 in 1964, ideal for the avalanche of youth culture that was about to overwhelm everyone. The hippies of Haight-Ashbury, the Beatles of Blighty, the Velvets of Vanderbilt Avenue.
But I feel I’d have missed out on more. Being 17 in 1979 meant I was primed for post-punk. You get what you get in terms of your music, but the longevity and even longer influence of those bands confirms that I was right to put my money on Joy Division and the Fall back then. More prescient than a college acquaintance who’d actually bought a copy of the Sordide Sentimentale version of Dead Souls/Atmosphere, then abandoned his long coat for a pair of espadrilles and the music of Blue Rondo a la Turk (I’ll respect his anonymity to protect the guilty).
My youth didn’t go to waste at all. I was unhappy for some of it, but that’s life. I feel much more sympathy for my own children who lost two of their finest years, locked up during a pandemic. But they emerged stoical and with a new love of books, I suppose.
Most pop music is about the state of youth, because that’s when our flower is in full bloom. Dreams, braces and Instagram. So, here’s some songs about fragility, first love and owning a band before anyone else gets to hear them.
Tracklist:
When I get my braces off, Mallrat
Teenager, Camera Obscura
Bathysphere, Smog
Mine first, Vancougar
Teenage crime, Adrian Lux
I wanna be an Instagrammer, Goofy18
Boyfriend, Best Coast
Kill yr boyfriend, Bis
Tire swing, Kimya Dawson
Younger us, Japandroids
I’m sixteen, The Cambodian Space Project
Teenage talk, St Vincent
Garden song, Phoebe Bridgers
The chronicles of a Bohemian teenager, Pt2, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
Don’t let our youth go to waste, Galaxie 500