I’ll say that one’s more about its title than teen angst.
Good one!
Bullet with butterfly wings by: Smashing Pumpkins
“Parents Just Don’t Understand” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince (AKA Will Smith; this song kick-started his career).
There are quite a few “teen angst” songs on Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention.
Teenage nervous breakdown…
gotta love Lowel and little feat
Point taken. Guess I misunderstood what angst means.
And The Kids Are Alright, d’oh, and the whole *Quadrophenia *double album. AndI’m A Boy, Pictures Of Lilly, …
The Good: The Who’s Baba O’Riley, The Animals’s We Gotta Get Outta This Place, Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta, Presidents of the United States of America’s Lump.
The Bad: Every single story song ever. The worst of the worst David Gedde’s Run Joey, Run and that song that got made over by a band I sorta had respect for until this about a car crash and angels and it’s so bad my brain will not let me remember any details.
I’m sorry. The OP specifically asked for the best teen angst songs. Please disregard the second part of my post. You can replace them with Journey-- any song really, but Don’t Stop Believing is the gold standard.
Now, I’m aware that to some of you I replaced bad with worst but your subjective tastes are wrong.
Zip City, Drive-By Truckers
*"Maybe it's the twenty-six mile drive from Zip City to Colbert Heights Keeps my mind clean Gets me through the night Maybe you're just a destination, a place for me to go A way to keep from having to deal with my seventeen-year-old mind all alone Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight By the time you drop them I'll be gone* And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life..."Quadrophenia wins the thread.
Tool - The Pot
"Who are you to wave your finger
You must have been out of your head
…
You must have been… high
You must have been sooo high.
Do those teen death songs from the 60s count? Teen Angel, Last Kiss, Laurie, Leader of the Pack, etc.
Personal favorite of mine in that vein: “This Year”.
I played video games in a drunken haze
I was 17 years young
Hurt my knuckles punching the machines
The taste of scotch rich on my tongue
And then Cathy showed up and we hung out
Trading swigs from a bottle, all bitter and clean
Locking eyes, holding hands
Twin high maintenance machines
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
I am going to make it through this year
If it kills me
Also, no love for My Chemical Romance? In a thread about teen angst? Ouch. Maybe there aren’t that many 90s kids around here. Cheesy? Sure. Emo? They pretty much defined the trope. But god damn does “I’m Not Okay (I promise)” ever hold up. This song is basically an entire generation’s teen angst in a black-and-red-lipsticked nutshell, and I will gladly hold this up as a rock classic worthy of veneration in the same way as, say, “Foxy Lady” or “Radar Love”. And “Dead” is pretty great too.
Mad World-Tears for Fears
I made this same mistake. The OP wants the best teen angst songs not the worst. And Last Kiss was the name of the song that I couldn’t remember in my other post. So thanks!
Has to be, It is one of my all time favourite albums so perhaps I am biased but it doesn’t have just one song about teenage angst, it is a rock opera specifically about teenage angst.
Take a look through any of the lyrics of any of the songs and it is all there.
Just one snippet from “I’m one”
I don’t think it’s possible for a song to get any angstier than the Stones’Paint it Black.
Exactly. And a hell of an album. One of my favourites, for sure.