Early Teen Years: Song Analysis

Ever since I was young, music has been a big part of my life and how I express myself. Music became an extremely important part of my life during my early teen years when I truly began to change physically and mentally. I began to have new experiences with others and began the process of figuring out who I really am. Without music, I do not know how I would express myself or how I would have endured my adolescence.
My interest in music began to rapidly grow around eighth grade. I started listening to alternative bands such as The Devil Wears Prada, We Came as Romans, and The Wonder Years. This time of my life is when my sexuality began to develop and I realized I was gay. Due to this, I became very depressed. I felt very alone and that no

one knew what I was going through. I was trapped inside a small, closed-minded town in the south with hate being shoved at me everyday. This is when I began to really connect with The Wonder Years in particular. Their songs focused on the challenges of growing up, dealing with the being different, and learning to be happy. One in particular that always strikes a cord with me is “Washington Square Park”. The last part of the song is the repetition of the lyrics, “And I thought, if no one’s in my corner, since everyone left, I better make it worth it.” These lyrics slowly helped me learn that nothing will change if you just wait around. They taught me that to be truly happy, you have to do it yourself.
As I slowly began to be comfortable with myself and who I am, I began to dive into new things. This mainly entailed dating and trying to have relationships. Most of them did not go over well and being the hopeless romantic I am, I did not do too well with the loneliness. Of course, I turned to music. One song that I still turn to is the song “Casablanca Sucked Anyways” by A day to Remember. The lyrics, “So tell me what’s so wrong with me that you could leave so easily,” were very relatable to me because no one ever gave me a definite reason as to why I wasn’t good enough for them. No matter what has happened through my failed attempts at relationships, music has always been there for me. It has helped me heal all emotional wounds no matter how deep.
Over the past two years, my attempts at dating have continued along with the rollercoaster of life. However, my love for music has never changed. My last two years of high school were the most difficult for me because I fell in love with someone who did not love me back, my relationship with my family began to go downhill, and life itself felt like it was falling through my fingertips. As always, I used music to help me through these times. I did not let myself fall back into the whole of depression because I would think of “Washington Square Park” and I would instantly be reminded of what has brought me this far. In the midst of everything happening, my parents and I fighting, falling in love with someone, and feeling like the whole world was against me, one night my life was changed through music.
The Wonder Years has helped me the most out of any artists, by far.

I had a feeling that the night I saw them live for the first time would be a phenomenal one. I had all of these issues bothering me at once and it was the night for me to forget about it all. The moment I knew that my life had really changed because of this band was during their encore. The song was “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral”. It was a collaboration of every song on their newest album along with the true message of the whole album at the very end. As I was standing in the crowd, singing my lungs off, the end of the song came with the lyrics, “I’m staring up at the sky, but the bombs keep fucking falling. But I wont’ let him in. No, I won’t let him in.” I was staring up at the ceiling singing these lyrics so loud and I began to cry. I had all of these problems coming after me and they were the devil on my front porch. No matter how hard it was, I never let him in and it was all because of music. After that night, my life only

improved.
Life continued to throw curveballs at me but I never let them get to me.

Then one day, little did I know my life was going to change. There was one person in particular that I had talked to on few occasions over the time-frame of about nine months. We finally agreed to meet and it want amazingly. One of the things that he told me that night was, “I’m gonna take care of you.” It was not meant to be this dramatic, time-stopping moment but it was. The perfect song to describe it is the song “Take Care” by Drake and Rihanna. The chorus of the song is, “I know you’ve been hurt by someone else. I can tell by the way you carry yourself. If you love me, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll take care of you.” We both have been hurt multiple times and have gone through multiple trials throughout life. Because of challenges we have faced, we are both stronger people and it makes our relationship stronger than

ever.
Although life is known for challenges, they are meant to make us stronger than we were before. My adolescence was not easy due to the struggles of being gay and trying to accept myself. Even though I thought it would get easier, life just had more trials for me to go through to prepare me to be the man that I am today. Without music, I would have never made it through these trials that life has to offer.