What does it mean to be a dirtbag?
I first encountered “Teenage Dirtbag” when I clicked on a video posted on a Directioner’s YouTube page with a fuzzy thumbnail of Zayn Malik singing to a crowd of teenage girls frothing at the mouth. The video follows the illustrious members of One Direction (in other words, five teenage boys) as they dance across the stage in Los Angeles, singing the pop-punk anthem with comic book-style graphics projected on the stadium screens behind them. Besides the fact that I was a die-hard Directioner myself, the whole thing was fascinating. Famous, wealthy, talented teen idols with high-octane boy-band energy, squeaky clean images, and the unadulterated obsession of millions of tweens worldwide — dirtbags? Please. But that’s the nearly-of-age-to-vote version of me talking. At the time, I would have sold my soul for a kleenex Harry Styles had used to blow his nose. And I realize now that the song wasn’t for them — it was for us, all of us who could imagine the exact situation Wheatus originally sang about when they cut this eternal track back in 2000. It represented the dream: being some unknown person in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people hoping to get noticed and then miraculously getting recognized by the one person you never thought you had a chance with. That was me. That was every single one of us wearing braces and our “Up All Night” concert t-shirts, getting the edges of our homemade posters soggy with our clammy hands as we held them up to the blinding lights of the stadium.
Five years later, I chose to sing this song in Rock Band with my best friend, Avery. Avery had joined me on one song before, “Babydoll” by Dominic Fike. Let’s just say it wasn’t our best performance. We sang over minimal instrumentals for one-and-a-half minutes, heading into the chorus with gusto only to butcher the rap verse when the guitar drops out, leaving the bass, the drums, and a lot of space for our voices to fill up. “Something’s missing,” Jaimeo, my Rock teacher, said after our performance. (That’s one way to put it.) It felt hollow for a reason; rapping about how our “daddy was a pimp” and “ momma had issues” through the industrial amps provided by our school’s band budget? Not exactly relatable. Knowing we really couldn’t communicate the full meaning of the verses, we added “Babydoll” to the long list of songs we had learned but wouldn’t make the cut for our formal concert. And getting it right really mattered to us. Avery had spent the majority of the year behind the keyboard in our band, carrying the weight of the team on her BACK while she sight-read partially incorrect chord charts off of her phone. She wanted a real moment as her debut, and so did I. We wanted a song that we could relate to on a deeper level, a song we could pour our emotions into. And that’s when it came to us: it had to be “Teenage Dirtbag.”
What makes the song so perfect? Especially nearly 25 years later? Brendan Brown starts out the first verse in a whiny voice, singing the lines, “Her name is Noelle / I have a dream about her.” Immediately, we’re right there. Every teenager knows what this is: a crush. He goes on, “I got gym class in half an hour / Oh, how she rocks / In Keds and tube socks.” Now for a quick historical sidebar: in my opinion, the word crush has been retired. But that concept, the all-consuming adolescent infatuation of it, definitely still exists, just in alternative forms. For example, my friends and I call our so-called crushes our “husbands” or “celebs.” That’s the thing about a crush. They represent something you can’t imagine yourself ever achieving. It’s the rush of longing, an idol you prefer to see from a distance. The few times I have managed to pull my “husband” of the week, I have always been disappointed. It all goes from exhilarating and exciting to that line Faye Webster wrote in her song “A Dream with a Baseball Player”: “How did I fall in love with someone I don’t know?” She’s picking up where Brendan Brown left off. He sings, “But she doesn't know who I am / And she doesn't care about me.” He can idealize Noelle only because she has no idea he exists (or so he thinks). This is at the core of what it means to be a dirtbag.
Yes, to be fair, I don’t exactly identify myself with the same aesthetic as Wheatus, but I identify with the idea of an unrequited crush and the bliss of having a valuable secret to keep, and I know my friends do, too. It sounds weird when you say it out loud, but I prefer to stay in a state of not really knowing what the other person (whoever they might be) thinks of me. I realize now that the beauty of a crush is having the chance to linger in a moment before it passes. Ariana Grande wrote it best in “Problems”: “I love the thought of you more than I love your presence.” Something about seeing someone up close is always a letdown. And that’s what it means to be a dirtbag, too.
“You have to really mean it! Scream it into the mic,” Jaimeo consistently shouted at us in our rehearsals. One thing I’ve learned about Jaimeo is how much he likes to talk. He would start off each class by asking everyone to rate their day on a scale of one to ten and then proceed to talk about how we can improve our productivity, counteracting his intent for the conversation as it usually ended up taking up the first thirty minutes of class. When it came to comments on our performances we received similarly lengthed critiques on what we could improve on. He would go on endless rants about the meaning of the nasal voice used to sing the chorus and the slightly out-of-tune way they sang it. He wanted us to throw away any embarrassment when trying to commit to the bit. By our final performance of the song, the chorus became less about the beauty of our voices and more about really communicating the emotion and feeling Wheatus was trying to convey when singing the chorus. Communicating the idea of having an earth-shattering, life-ruining, unattainable crush.
I thought of how my classmate belted the opening lines of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gainer, raising her hand and then swiftly lowering it so that the band would strike the beat while she sang the word “first.” That’s how the song starts — maybe how any song starts. At first I was afraid; I was petrified. She was not phased by the idea of having to wave her hand around in motions only the band would understand because she was singing a song she had listened to on repeat after her first breakup—a breakup with a boy who was in the audience watching us perform. My final boss — the one I was singing to — was a little different, because in some ways it might have just been me performing screamo for myself. I always set expectations lower than what can be achieved for fear of looking stupid. And I don’t want to do that anymore. Although I didn’t feel there was a breakup I could correlate “Teenage Dirtbag” with, I’ve had days where I could have written the lyrics “Man, I feel like mold” myself. This was something I could rally emotion behind—I would go on stage and yell at every stupid thing I’d ever cried over, from SAT prep and counting calories in the cafeteria to the fear of not having a prom date.
When the evening came for my Rock Band to do our yearly two-hour rock show at Hopmunk Tavern, Avery and I realized we might have to compete for attention among a forty-song setlist. A setlist that covered iconic songs like “Separate Ways,” “Before He Cheats,” “Creep,” and “Free Bird.” We could feel the crowd growing tired midway through our concert and thought nobody would listen by the time we took the stage. But I’ll never forget that moment when our drummer Liam began the first drum beats, and the crowd lit up. We sang so loudly, and I felt like I saw myself and my best friend up close, better than ever before. Some things, like a really good song about angsty high schoolers, are timeless. Something about seeing someone up close is always a letdown until one time it’s not. But that’s not a crush, I don’t think. I’m pretty sure it’s love.
