Living With Angst And The Music That Goes With It

LISA GORRY

We’ve all been through that stage in our adolescence, when the world seems to hate us, our parents don’t understand us, and our music can really empathise with us and express the feelings that we don’t want to talk about. While I myself went through a very mild form of such angst, my sister went through the whole process, from emo kid to slightly less emo kid, to finally-being-able-to-deal-with-my-emo-tions kid.

There’s a lot to be said for a good angsty song, be it at the gym or when you’ve had a rough day, but it takes a particular type of band or singer to capture the emotions of an angsty teenager, and some bands have so become synonymous with the movement.

Alanis Morrisette

This lady is the queen bee of angsty music, and with tracks such as “I Wanna Know”, her debut album “Jagged Little Pill” voiced the angst of a generation, and is in fact still doing so. It’s a testament to the album and to Ms. Morrissette herself that seventeen years after its release date in 1995, it’s still helping angst ridden teens blow off some steam.

Greenday

With songs like “I Want to Be Alone”, it’s not surprising that Greenday have found themselves as the voice of an angsty generation. That said, the band seem to have been tailor made for just such an audience, with their political causes and guitar-heavy fuelled anthems. “American Idiot” was certainly a regular feature on my sister’s emotional playlist, and it seems that the Californian band were the only act to continue to feature outside of this angsty phase. Sticking it to the man since 1987.

Fallout Boy

Fallout Boy were my teen angst band of choice back in the day, and I’m not ashamed to say that I still enjoy the odd listen. It was a band that I now see as synonymous with my early teenage years, and I’ve since found people who went through the exact same thing. They were the right mix of “I-don’t-give-a-shit” and catchy hooks, and their first album to get mainstream attention, “Take This To Your Grave” is a record I like to revisit, angst-fuelled or not.

My Chemical Romance

Well aren’t these just the poster boys of the angsty teens of the noughties. I’m got going to lie, “Teenagers” was one hell of a tune, no matter what side of the MCR fence you sit on. With their slick hair and grungy eye make-up, they voiced many the frustration for the slightly more disgruntled teen, and while we haven’t heard much from them lately, their album “Take Me to the Black Parade” is most definitely a record that as so fuelled with teenage angst, I’m surprised Gerard Way didn’t revert back to his teenage form.

Radiohead

The granddaddies of the disgruntled youth. Nothing says “angst” more than lamenting after some poor helpless girl with the lyrics “you’re so fucking special” and hoping that she’ll fall into your arms, in spite of the fact that you’re a creep.  Stick your head in the oven stuff? Possibly. But Radiohead were that cool band that didn’t need to shout about their disenlightenment with the world, but rather moped about it in a fantastically Brit-pop and entrancing form. They did do it to themselves.