Released October 1988 (1988-10) Length 3:50 | Format 12-inch single | |
Recorded July–August 1988,Greene St. Recording(New York City) Genre Alternative rockindie rock | ||
"Teen Age Riot" was the first single from Sonic Youth's 1988 album, Daydream Nation. It received heavy airplay on modern rock stations and considerably expanded their audience (along with the album itself).
Contents
"Teen Age Riot" is one of Sonic Youth's most recognizable songs, yet it is something of an oddity amongst their repertoire, consisting of a traditional verse-chorus pop song structure.
The song was included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and is an on-disc track in Rock Band 2.
Lyrical themes
The song was supposedly written about a fantasy world where J Mascis is president. In the liner notes accompanying the deluxe edition of Daydream Nation, Byron Coley quoted Thurston Moore on "Teen Age Riot": "It was actually about appointing J Mascis as our de facto alternative dream president".
Song structure
The album version of the song has two distinct parts. The intro section features a repeating, hypnotic guitar melody, and Kim Gordon reciting stream-of-consciousness prose, such as "You're it, no you're it / Say it, don't spray it / Miss me, don't dismiss me / Spirit desire / We will fall." ("We Will Fall" is a reference to the Stooges' song of the same name from their debut eponymous album). After 80 seconds, all instruments stop, and Moore breaks through the fading instruments with a fast, distorted, noisy guitar riff, opening the main section of the song. The riff leads to the dynamic guitar melody that plays throughout the rest of the song with the vocal melody, sung by Moore. The riff that opens the section is repeated once again afterwards in the song, with all of the instruments accompanying it in an interlude that leads to the song's last few lines.
As with many Sonic Youth songs, the guitars were unconventionally tuned; in this case, Moore's pentatonic tuning was (reading from left to right, the lowest-pitched string to the highest-pitched string) GABDEG and Lee Ranaldo's tuning was GGDDGG, as published in a Guitar World interview with the band.
Some live performances of "Teen Age Riot" omitted the opening section sung by Gordon, notably the live version recorded and released with the deluxe edition of Daydream Nation. The opening section was also cut from the song's music video.
Music video
The video for the song was Sonic Youth's fourth overall, excluding the low-budget Ciccone Youth videos; the band directed it themselves. It included clips of many icons of alternative music culture such as Mascis, Mark E. Smith, Johnny Thunders, Neil Young, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Sun Ra, D. Boon, Mike Watt, Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Blixa Bargeld and Kiss.