Teenage Dirtbag
| "Teenage Dirtbag" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by Wheatus | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Wheatus | ||||||||||||||
| Released | July 17, 2000 | |||||||||||||
| Format | CD single | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 2000 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Power pop, pop rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 4:07 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Columbia | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Brendan B. Brown | |||||||||||||
| Wheatus singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"Teenage Dirtbag" is a song and debut single by American pop rock group Wheatus. It was released in July 2000 as the lead single from their eponymous debut album. The song was written by lead singer Brendan B. Brown and was inspired by a childhood experience of his.
The song was massively successful in Australia, spending four weeks at number 1, being certified 3× Platinum and becoming the second best-selling single of the year. It also reached number 2 in Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom, where it was certified Platinum in 2013. It has sold 5 million copies worldwide as of 2014.
"Teenage Dirtbag" is about a childhood experience that Wheatus frontman Brendan B. Brown had. In a 2012 interview with Tone Deaf, he said: "It came from the summer of 1984 on Long Island, when I was 10 years old. That summer in the woods behind my house, there was a Satanic, drug-induced ritual teen homicide that went down; and the kid who did it was called Ricky Kasso, and he was arrested wearing an AC/DC T-shirt. That made all the papers, and the television, obviously; and here I was, 10 years old, walking around with a case full of AC/DC and Iron Maiden and Metallica [songs] – and all the parents and the teachers and the cops thought I was some kind of Satan worshipper. So that's the backdrop for that song." Brown also added that the song's sing-a-long chorus remains an act of defiance: "so when I sing: 'I'm just a teenage dirtbag', I'm effectively saying: 'Yeah, fuck you if you don't like it. Just because I like AC/DC doesn't mean I'm a devil worshipper, and you're an idiot.' That's where it comes from."
In the same interview, regarding on the possible reasons for its continued success, Brown recalled his father's words: "Every teenager has to go through that 'being an outsider' thing, at least a little bit. So that story is still the same for people, even if it's thirty years after I went through it."
The song is performed by Brown, including the segment in a high pitched falsetto voice. When the group arranged a joint tour with MC Frontalot, MC Frontalot contributed a nerdcore rap verse to the song, as did MC Lars.
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Wikipedia