alicejean

[alicejean]

DECADES OF TEENAGE LOVE

1965 - I've Just Seen a Face, The Beatles This track off of the Beatles' 1965 album "Help" is the perfect start to this playlist. Lyrically the song is everything I want to achieve with this anthology - it is about what I can't call anything other than big love - about a love which consumes, takes over and moves someone. I originally titled the playlist "I WANT ALL THE WORLD TO SEE," after the lyric in the first verse, "She's just the girl for me, and I want all the world to see we've met!" It encompasses the feeling of teenage love feeling so massive, it's the biggest thing in your life, the biggest thing you've ever experienced, and something you want to share with everyone in the world. 

The title shouts this urgency from the rooftops, "I've just seen a face," the song excitedly starts, capturing the unique moment of having recently met a girl and feeling total and certain infatuation.

This track is widely known for its immensely wonderful rhyming schemes, (they don't come across particularly well in text and must be listened to). "Had it been another day I might have looked the other way and I'd have never been aware, but as it is I'll dream of her tonight." The rhymes in this song effortlessly cascade into one another. Compositionally the rhymes fit together so perfectly and leaving the listener with what I can only describe as a feeling that this is a song that was meant to be written.

Like any immense, all-consuming crush, this song has quite a wonderful power of luring you back in again and again. "and she keeps calling me back again," sighs McCartney in the main choral motif, bringing the listening back in again for another verse, another chorus. The song is a short, passionate burst of infatuation and adoration. Nothing could be more better fitting to kick off this playlist.

1978 - Teenage Kicks, The Undertones Nearly forty years on from it's release, The Undertones' single Teenage Kicks is a staple of British punk culture and an iconic anthem of adolescent love. On my quest to compile the ultimate playlist of teenage love songs, this electric, desperate, raspy track was at the top of my list.

In writing this song, John O'Neill didn't tell a story that was particularly new - the essence of punk music lies in telling the mundane tales of everyday life in a way that resonates with a subculture, which moves, mobilises and touches a generation. "Are teenage dreams, so hard to beat? Every time she walks down the street," O'Neill's opening lyrics laid over the band's ripping punk rock riffs radiate lust, desperation, energy and melancholy - the typical and vital ingredients of any teenage crush.

This song owes a lot of its fame to eighties BBC1 Radio DJ John Peel, who declared it as his favourite single ever released and gave it twenty eight stars out of five. Peel famously played it twice, back to back, on Radio 1, with no explanation but "It doesn't get better than this." Teenage Kicks is infectious and this is totally self-fulfilling. The song is about infectious love, about craving and passion, and Peel's comment on the track strikes me as so central to what The Undertones were going out to achieve.

What I find to be such an impactful aspect of Teenage Kicks is its treatment of the erotic. It's a song about sex but isn't for a second vulgar or demeaning; it is fundamentally about desire - "I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight, want teenage kicks right through the night,". O'Neill's references are almost virginal - the desire of the song isn't so much the girl in question but the feeling, he desires fulfilment, he desires sex and love but beneath that, the lyrics emit a raw and powerful desire to be wanted. "I need excitement and I need it fast," he pines, desperate for the excitement - the kicks - which make being an adolescent so infuriatingly and maddeningly wonderful.

1981 - Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield American pop in the 80s was immense and iconic - Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and their contemporaries dominated the scene. With the rise of MTV, international acts such as Duran Duran and Ozzy Osbourne were bursting onto the American charts, including Australian pop star Rick Springfield. His single Jessie's Girl is a simple, eminent track packed with all the essential components I've been looking for for this playlist. It's desperate, in love, sexually frustrated and adoring. Springfield tells the age old story of falling in love with your friend's girl, yet the raw emotion is easily understood by anyone in love with a girl they can't get for any reason.

"She's watching him with those eyes, and she's loving him with that body, I just know it," Springfield bitterly admits in the bridge to the chorus, before belting forth his desire - "You know I wish that I had Jessie's girl".  Like Teenage Kicks, this story isn't unique and the lyrics aren't particularly poetic - for it's the simplicity that gives the punch in this song. - "I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot," sighs Springfield, this lyric is so painfully relatable - that moment when you know you're absolutely in love with someone, mixed with the knowledge of how pitifully futile your feelings are. 

My favourite lyric in this track comes at the end of the bridge, "Ain't that the way love's supposed to be?". This lyric sums up what I'm trying to achieve with this playlist. It encapsulates the timeless and endless teenage pursuit of what love's supposed to be like, what it's meant to feel like, and never really finding out.

2013 - Closer, Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara's Closer is a track written specifically about the madness of teenage love, and is absolutely fitting for this list. It is beautifully nuanced and to me is one of the standout singles on this playlist in terms of describing desire. "It wasn't necessarily even about hooking up or admitting your feelings," songwriter Tegan Quinn said about the track, "It was the anticipation of something maybe happening that was truly exciting and satisfying." The concept of the song is so wonderful to me - the simple excitement from just getting a little bit physically closer to the person you're mad about. "All I want to get is a little bit closer," the song starts.

I love the lyric "Here comes the rush before we touch," - celebrating not sex or even kissing but the simple, physical rush of emotion you feel before you might hold hands or even brush shoulders with the person you fancy. This song to me really exemplifies one of my favourite things about this playlist which is actually celebrating desperation. Going on a small tangent here - but I've always hated how the word needy is generally used negatively. We're all needy, being in love makes you needy and it's good! And I love that this track celebrates the joy of neediness, of knowing what you want and belting out a pop song about it.

My favourite lyric in this song - and probably my favourite Tegan and Sara lyric - comes at the end of the chorus, "I won't treat you like you're typical." I love this line for totally epitomising the moment when you know you're in love with someone but you're not together - it's the feeling of knowing how good you'd be together, and knowing that you'd never treat them as anything less than extraordinary.

2016 - Cut To The Feeling, Carly Rae Jepsen Remember way back when I was talking about I've Just Seen a Face by the Beatles, and how it's about love feeling so big? It's good to know that sixty years on, song-writers are still feeling that, and still writing about that. Cut To The Feeling is my favourite Carly Rae Jepsen song, it's so immense and shameless and happy. Musically, the beat at the start of the song is rousing and immersive, leading to a gorgeous vocal run just before chorus, and then dropping into the chrous's infectious bass line which lifts the song onto another level.

Like the song I started this playlist with, this track is about love feeling so big when you're young. "I wanna cut through the clouds, break the ceiling," Carly belts out in the chorus. To me this describes how powered up a crush can make you feel, and that classic teenage feeling that the way you feel about someone could light up whole cities. The recurring lyric, "I wanna cut to the feeling," is simple and powerful. A sort of - cut the bullshit, cut the messing around, let's fall in love.

I love how many of the lyrics in this song start with "I want," - especially every line in the chorus. I've always maintained that Rufus Wainwright's 2005 album "Want" has one of the best album titles in pop. It's exactly what the genre is about, and I love how the lyrics of Cut To The Feeling celebrate that.  I really like the disjointed, abstract lyrics in the chorus, "I wanna play where you play with the angels, I wanna wake up with you all in tangles." This reminds me of the first drafts of lyrics when you write them, but in a wholly positive way. I like these lyrics feel imperfect and like they were written in a few hours, emitting a brilliant urgency and desperation. 

Sonically this song probably has one of my favourite choruses of recent pop music. It's exactly the chorus you want to belt out on a dancefloor with your best friends or your crush and feel like your love is filling the whole room.

It's quite incredible how teenage love has been so powerfully and immensely documented through the power of pop. There's probably a hundred more songs I could add to this playlist, but for now I'm really happy with these five songs demonstrating how timeless, infinite and universal our feelings are, and how pop has always been the perfect vehicle with which to tell the world about them.

(link to the playlist here)