An ode to songs called "seventeen" and to my best friend Ella who showed me that every song about being 17 is the best song ever.
seventeen by sharon van etten
I'm in the passenger seat and it's a Friday night. We have nothing better to do so me and my friends are going for a drive, one of thousands of such drives we’d take over the course of our restless high school years. We wind up the hills on dark backroads, windows down, our off-key voices leaving a trace of us among the quiet trees lining the asphalt, fleeting and headstrong, at once loud and self-concious.
I get goosebumps when Sharon Van Etten sings "I used to be seventeen. Now you're just like me... I see you so uncomfortably alone. I wish I could show you how much you've grown." Her voice floods the car with emotion and I tear up. Her words tease and comfort me like an older sister’s, and I think about what it's like to be seventeen, feeling like you're at the bottom of a mountain looking up, the oldest and wisest you've ever been but understanding that when you look back it will all feel so far away, so juvenile.
seventeen by peach pit
"Back at Patrick park/We stood in the dark. In my beer-stained mind, I said/'Please won't you be mine?'"
It's the eve of my seventeenth birthday and I'm laying on my back in a square patch of grass. Paul is laying next to me and we’re probably talking about something stupid. Paul was my summer fling two summers in a row, back when I thought I was bi and needed to prove to myself that yes, I could like a guy, and yes, he could like me back. He was loaded, his family exclusively drove white Porsches, and he was a weird dude but very handsome. We met in physics class, junior year, and awkwardly made out from time to time.
Under the yellow orange glow from the street lights, midnight creeps closer, and I get more and more giddy about aging up from sweet sixteen to a flirty, mysterious seventeen. It seems like such a big deal, and driving Paul back to his place as the clock struck midnight (past my curfew) I felt very adult. He runs inside and comes back out with a gift for me, Lorde's Pure Heroine on vinyl. I just about cry. My all time favorite album; Lorde infused those songs with wisdom and depth of emotion little girls attain at fourteen and men might eventually achieve if they do acid enough times. We kiss and I drive home, a grinning seventeen year old with a new prized possession.
seventeen by ladytron
I'm with my best friends and we’re walking to a party we aren't really invited to. I'm almost shaking with anxiety about socializing where I’m not welcome, nowhere near grown into myself, wearing clothes I hate because I can't bear to not fit in, even though I know the yoga pants and crop top don't look right on my over six foot frame. Walking the mile to the party along a busy road at rush hour, I can feel the eyes of every passing car driver on our backs like mosquito bites. Then they start honking. It's a fast road, each honker whizzing by and anonymous, and we four are stoic sitting ducks, refusing to walk faster or act like it bothers us.
"They only want you when you're seventeen, when you're twenty one, you're no fun." And it's true, most of the times I've been cat called were when I was a teenager; it's funny how now that I could legally be into that kind of thing, the honks have halted. Something about teenhood, looking vulnerable, and walking places lends itself to overconfident drivers and shouted quips through an open window.
We didn't make it into the party—they had a fucking guest list and a bouncer—and a hidden part of me was so relieved that we didn't have to go in, that we could just watch tv and lick our rejection inflicted wounds. Walking back home we took side streets, strolling in peace, seventeen and laughing with years ahead of us to throw our own parties.
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