High School

There's something odd about listening to songs about high school as an adult. Reigning Sound's "Time Bomb High School" is a fantastic song that feels like it accurately represents the rebellious feelings of being in high school, and it gets me worked up and singing along, but what does high school really have to do with my life anymore? Relevance? Low, at best. Still, I love it. It's interesting thinking back on my changing feelings about high school over the years.

The first high school song I fell for was Sentridoh's (Lou Barlow's) "High School". This was back when I was in middle school. The song's full of nostalgia and it's odd to feel nostalgia for something you've yet to experience. Lou Barlow does an excellent job of capturing that rebellious tension through little more than an acoustic guitar and vocals. "Rotting back in high school/fucking pictures pages/ fingers up and down/rockin' through the ages." These things felt like truisms of high school even before I'd experienced them.

While in high school, I fell in love with my second high school song, Atom and His Package's "Punk Rock Academy". From truism to escapism. Once in high school, I wanted the song about a dream of the non-existent. You don't need realism when you're living through it. What is high school other than a time of dreaming about bigger and better things? My shitty high school punk band even covered the song.

This brings us back to Reigning Sound's "Time Bomb High School", a song that wasn't released until I was nearing the end of college. A mix of the nostalgia of "High School" and the escapism of "Punk Rock Academy", "Time Bomb High School" is an adult singing about the stereotypical cliques of a fictional high school. Naming it Time Bomb High School is both exciting, as it brings to mind the explosive nature of the emotions of the time, and relevant, given the school shootings that had become unfortunately regular. The mixture of these emotions and ideas make the song exactly what I want from a song about high school and have kept it in my regular rotation even when I'm not just feeling nostalgic about my younger days.

Sentridoh's High School

Atom and His Package's Punk Rock Academy

Reigning Sound's Time Bomb High School

The songs come from the albums: Sentridoh- Winning Losers released by Smells Like Records, Atom and His Package- A Society of People Named Elihu released by Mountain Records, and Reigning Sound- Time Bomb High School released by In The Red Records, respectively.
*Image credit: Jona Frank, "John Henry, Santa Monica"