the 10 albums that soundtracked my teens

i'm 20 now and i'm obligated to reflect on every waking minute

October 15th, 2023 was my 20th birthday. The cause of my abundance of existentialism, reflection, and reevaluation came at me like a bullet train; or perhaps a Mack truck to be more faithful to being an American. This era of 7 volatile years of my life has reached its conclusion on what I consider now as a big fat question mark. I’m certain I’ll be able to make more sense of how my teens developed who I am as a person later down the line, but for now all I am certain of is the music that defined these years poignantly. This list was surprisingly not at all difficult to assemble, so here they are in chronological order of when they were most relevant in my life. 

Intertwined EP - dodie

For better or worse, dodie is the reason I am the woman I am today. Her presence as an artist is now far different than what it was when I was enamored by her as a 13 year old, but her “wise-but-imperfect-older-sister” attitude made me feel like I was growing up alongside her. She was the first artist that gave me that indescribable feeling of being seen. If we forget about the silly novelty of “I Have A Hole In My Tooth” (the song that was my morning alarm for a good chunk of middle school), we have a handful of well written songs with themes that still remain as relevant in my life today as they did 7 years ago. My crush on a girl I met on my 8th grade DC trip was soundtracked to “Absolutely Smitten,” “Sick of Losing Soulmates” for my tumultuous friend breakups, and “When” for the moody 14 year old girl that lives inside us all. The title track remains my favorite song of dodie’s to this day. The gory imagery depicting unhealthy romantic codependency becomes more heart-wrenchingly gorgeous the more you delve into the song’s lyrics. The line “You create a rarity of my genuine smiles” was something that really resonated with me as a young teen dealing with growing pains and processing the ramification of my upbringing for the first time. After my first heartbreak at 15, it was the song I went to to cope with losing a relationship that was reminiscent of the one described in the song. Upon re-listening now, those songs mean different things to me as I’ve grown up and had new experiences, but I can certainly still feel my anxiety-ridden pimply younger self buried deep within these songs.

Apricot Princess - Rex Orange County

As a music major who’s friends with mostly other music majors, the history of our tastes and favorite artists comes up in conversation quite consistently. I’ve come to learn that I am far from the only person to credit Rex Orange County for building the bridge between my music taste as a child to the ever-developing taste of my teens. With elements of R&B, modern jazz, alternative hip-hop, and even some Strokes-esque garage rock, Apricot Princess is the quintessential white girls’ foray into music taste expansion. I simply could not put this album down in 2018. And since Rex’s discography after the release of Apricot Princess has been largely hit-and-miss, I can almost confidently say that this is his magnum opus. The songs “4 Seasons” and “Waiting Room” in particular helped me process the loss of both my paternal grandparents, both happening within a few months of each other. But before the turmoil was several nights of dancing alone in my room to bangers like “Television/So Far So Good,” “Never Enough,” and the titular “Apricot Princess.” If anything, this album is an instant rush of nostalgia for anything that happened in 2018.

Igor by Tyler, the Creator

One of the embarrassingly few things that me and my fair-weather high school friends had in common was our admiration for Tyler, the Creator. His 5th studio album, Igor, released at the tail end of my freshman year of high school, which for me was a time of fickleness, trying to fit in, and learning what it means to love someone. To spill some rather juicy lore on this period of my life, my first ever boyfriend bought us tickets to go see Tyler on his tour for Igor. It was an album that we both loved and listened to together often. We broke up a week before the concert, and he gave my ticket to my then codependent-but-we-were-actually-just-gay-and-in-love-with-each-other best friend. They went on to date for less than a month, catapulting her and I into a tumultuous fallout (we are now close friends again, I don’t speak to the boy anymore). But in the months leading up to that, all my friends would put this album on front to back at any chance they got. I still to this day am in awe of what I believe is Tyler’s best song, “NEW MAGIC WAND,” and have very fond and vivid memories of crying to “GONE GONE/THANK YOU” and the gorgeous “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?”; a song I will never refuse to blast in my car with the windows down driving along the strip-mall lined streets of midwestern suburbia.

Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest 

For me, Twin Fantasy is emblematic of love in all its forms. I remember when my friend showed me the 13 minute juggernaut “Beach Life-In-Death” for the first time when we were 14. Nearly 4 years later we danced to that same song being performed live while trying to spot my then boyfriend crowd surfing with his best friend from the balcony. The two of them got matching tattoos of the album cover a few months after the show. In that same room on that same night stood three of my current best friends (1 of them my roommate) before any of us knew each other. We’d all end up at the same college. Two of them just celebrated one year of dating, while the other I met because I spotted her Car Seat Headrest tour t-shirt at a welcome week event. When any of us are on aux at a function we always make sure a song on this album slips in. We look at each other and emphatically sing along to the words (especially “Bodys”). Twin Fantasy is for those who expect to stumble over their words, whose right hand doesn’t know what their left hand is doing. There is an innate sense of understanding, appreciation, and love that comes with sharing those qualities and resonating with an album like Twin Fantasy. Maybe it isn’t bad if people paint Car Seat Headrest fans as a monolith.

Puberty 2 by Mitski

I am a yearner at heart, and if there’s a way to cycle through every possible emotion in 31 minutes I will do so as I damn please. I think Puberty 2 certainly has the potential to hit harder for me a couple years down the road, but that certainly doesn’t diminish the impact it has on me as a 16 year old. It’s Mitski doing what she does best: desperation, melancholia, rage, the works. What I’ve learned about myself over these past few years is I am loyal to a fault, and oftentimes it comes at my own detriment. When someone clings onto me, I’ll cling onto them twice as much. The songs “Happy” and “Crack Baby” describe that feeling and experience so potently, both boiling down to “I don’t know who I am without this person entwined in my life, and now that they’re not I may as well be left to wither.” Or, as Mitski may put it, “If you’re going take the train//So I can hear it rumble, one last rumble// When you go, take this heart, I’ll make no more use of it when there’s no more you.”

Lush by Snail Mail

No album has stuck with me quite like Lush. There are some things that seem so meticulously catered to my interests that I question the true fabric of reality, and Snail Mail is one of those things. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t listen to at least one song off of this album, and I heard it for the first time in 2019. The flippancy, annoyance, and vague threats displayed in the nooks and crannies of every song on Lush is what makes it resonate with me more than any other album I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel of angsty indie rock by any means but it’s undeniable that Lindsey Jordan is a stellar guitarist, especially at 17/18 when she wrote this material. The admittedly very straightforward lyricism on Lush is exactly what goes through my head 24/7. To know this album is to know me as a human being. There’s a reason why my friends call Snail Mail “The most Leah-core artist.” Anyways…

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

While I first heard Punisher upon its release the summer of 2020, the circumstances of the time prevented it from hitting as hard as emotionally. I only saw a handful of my closest friends, my mom, and the kids I worked with for my part time summer job. Punisher is about the dichotomy of love and hate, and how those things combine to spark confusion and anger. As time passed, my favorite song on the album has jumped between almost every single track on the album. When I was struggling with separating my culture from religion, I was in love with “Chinese Satellite.” When I wasn’t on speaking terms with my dad, “Kyoto” was in heavy rotation. Around the time of my high school graduation, I had an elevated appreciation for this album, especially after seeing Phoebe for the second time in the same calendar year. I sobbed my heart out straight through both “Graceland Too” and “I Know The End” next to a love with a quickly approaching expiration date. I had a lot of big bad feelings about starting a new chapter in my life, and hearing both “She knows she lived through it to get to this moment” and “I’ll find a new place to be from” sung back to me in that moment was something I’ll remember for a very long time. 

Even 1.5 years removed from that time, different parts of Punisher still find new ways to become relevant to me. Now that I’m at a point in my career where I’m starting to meet some of my heroes, the title track becomes eerily relevant. Now that I’m not in a relationship, the gut wrenching unrequited love detailed in “Moon Song” and the gorgeously horny waltz of “Savior Complex” insert themselves into experiences I’ve had in the past year or so. Not only is Punisher the quintessential album for me, I have no doubt it’ll be looked back on as a quintessential album of this decade.

Folklore by Taylor Swift

The saddest thing about folklore is that I don’t think Taylor has the ability to top it. For me, this is the music that she was always meant to make. You can call it pandering all you want, it fucking worked. She’s not Joni Mitchell reincarnate but the storytelling on “cardigan,” “the last great american dynasty,” and “my tears ricochet” rival the universal acclaim of an “All Too Well” or “Dear John.” I would listen to these songs over and over again and I still do. Regardless of whether or not I related to the specific concept of each song, they all resonated with me, some later than others. Also would like to put on record that “illicit affairs” is my favorite song in her whole discography, even for the bridge alone. I especially related to it a lot this past summer to the point where a pregame for one of those clandestine meetings was listening to it while crying in my car… lol

You’re Gonna Miss It All by Modern Baseball

If it were not for this album I would not be where I am today. The emo gateway drug of sorts, this album unlocked some kind of extra angsty teen within me: the part of my brain that doesn’t think “whatever, forever” is a corny lyric. This album soundtracked the during (“Rock Bottom,” “Notes,” and “Pothole”) and the after (“Your Graduation,” “Broken Cash Machine,” and “Charlie Black”) of a relationship. The impending reality of “Your Graduation” plagued my then partner and I as the day we’d eventually be forced to split quickly approached. This band and this album was for a while synonymous with memories of this relationship, but I’ve since kind of been able to reclaim it from how intertwined it is with my college life. “Did you know Modern Baseball went to Drexel?” is now a bastardized joke, I’ve now met Jake Ewald twice (he knows who I am now or whatever), and there are plenty of other lovely people I can lock eyes with any time one of their songs comes on. It’s a part of my identity in the “before” and the “after” which I think is kind of beautiful.

Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road

If there’s any album that signifies the beginning of college it’s this one. The echo-chamber, circlejerk, community, whatever you want to call what I’m apart of will fall to their knees in a Walmart for this band. If Isaac Wood is God, “Basketball Shoes” is the Bible. There will not be a week that goes by where this album is not brought up as the masterpiece that it is. The first time I heard Ants it was on my friend’s vinyl while we writing “I Hate Matty Healy” on XL plain white tshirts. It was truly college in a nutshell. My walks to class, my meals in Hans, and drowning out the noise of my bitch-ass freshman year roommates were all soundtracked by this album and I truly would not have had it any other way.

I’m scared, I’m excited, I’m 20. Stream Lush by Snail Mail for clear skin.