There’s nothing quite like the high school experience, when it’s possible to feel like everything in the world is about you, and you’re ridiculously sure of what your life will be like in 10 years—and yet you can only maintain paper-thin confidence and sense of self.
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Everyone’s been young and naive like that, which is why songs about high school have such a strong and recurrent appeal. Below you’ll find our five favorite songs that perfectly embody the heightened sensual and emotional experiences felt in high school.
1. “Fifteen,” Taylor Swift (2008)
Swift nails the sentiments of a 15-year-old, singing, ‘Cause when you’re fifteen and someone tells you they love you / You’re gonna believe them. In the song, Swift employs an old screenwriting trick known as a “B” Story, which runs parallel to the main story and involves a secondary character with a similar problem to the protagonist.
In this case, it’s her best friend Abagail, who isn’t as skeptical as Swift’s narrator. As a result, she gave everything she had / to a boy who changed his mind / and we both cried. Swift encapsulates the solidarity among friends at that age—bonded by the excitement and trepidation of life after high school.
2. “Growin’ Up,” Bruce Springsteen (1973)
This is one of Springsteen’s earliest songs; it’s from his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The lyrics recount the tales of a young man’s showy tendencies, sense of rebellion, and search for answers.
“Growin’ Up” reminds the listener of both the youthful innocence of following your dreams, and the subsequent challenge of holding on to those dreams once you get older. It’s a theme Springsteen returned to frequently, especially on “Racing in the Streets,” where his girl cries on the porch because “all her pretty dreams are torn.”
3. “Night Moves,” Bob Seger (1975)
By now, almost 50 years after Seger wrote it, many of the song’s metaphors haven’t stood the test of time. But the term “night moves”—the idea of working on mysteries together without any clues—still feels timeless. Perhaps Seger’s take on teen romance is summed up best in the line, We were just young and restless and bored. The song conjures the driving force of teenage hormones in a way that feels less self-aware and more primal than many of us can manage later on in life.
4. “School’s Out,” Alice Cooper (1972)
Touching upon the more rough-and-tumble tendencies of some teens, the song’s title comes from the Bowery Boys movies, a serialized collection of 48 low-budget films about menacing New York City kid hoodlums. The phrase “school’s out” was used in the context of “wisen-up,” with the implication that book-learning wasn’t going to help you to be street-smart once schoooooool’s out, for-EVER.
[RELATED: How Alice Cooper Got His Name]
5. “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” Brownsville Station (1973)
Most MTV kids thought “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” was a Mötley Crüe original in 1985 when they rode the track to No. 16 on the Billboard charts for their first Top 40 single. But Brownsville Station turned the song into an even bigger hit a dozen years earlier, going to No. 3 in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as cracking the Top 10 in France and Australia. This song’s nicotine-fueled teenage rebellion sparked memories of reckless behavior in people worldwide, showing how reflecting on one’s high school days is a universal and timeless experience.
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