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It all happened during that magical summer of 2000.
Everything on the radio was either bubblegum pop or post-grunge angst. “Last Nite” was still 6
months away. Something had to fill the void, and that something was Wheatus and “Teenage Dirtbag.”
Featuring the hip-hop inflections of nu metal, the teen drama of pop punk
and an all-time pop earworm of a chorus, it was the sound of the times but unlike anything else.
Though their only true international hit, its tale of young love, not fitting in and Iron Maiden
would capture the hearts of a generation. This is the Story of “Teenage Dirtbag.”
“Teenage Dirtbag” is, in essence, the story of Wheatus' lead singer
and only consistent member Brendan B Brown. Born in 1973, he grew up in Northport,
New York. Though he listened to his parents’ singer/songwriter records as a kid,
the first music that he felt was truly his own was heavy metal.
“When I was 9 years old and I saw Angus Young from AC/DC on TV,
I kind of said to myself 'man if there’s any version of that I can do for a living I will
have it'. I just thought that was so cool.” Brown started playing guitar immediately after,
and alongside AC/DC, his early idols included Rush, Metallica, and of course Iron Maiden.
But his obsession with hard rock hit a roadblock when in the summer of 1984,
in the woods behind his house, seventeen-year-old Ricky Kasso stabbed his friend to death allegedly
in the name of Satan. It would be two weeks before the body was found,
in the meantime the killer had been showing off his kill to friends. Brown's conservative
Christian hometown blamed heavy metal for this tragedy. The Rolling Stone article on the event
described the teenage killer as a “dirt-bag”. "The murderer was wearing an AC/DC T-shirt,
and after the murder, those letters came to mean Anti-Christ/Devil Child. I was an AC/DC fan,
so I became a dirtbag in the eyes of the authorities of my little seaside town."
Because of killing being so close to their home, and fearing for their son's safety his parents
sent Brown to a new school 80 minutes away, which meant instead of a social life he ended up
spending his time practicing guitar. And because of his love of out-of-vogue metal, he'd also be a
target for bullies. “I would get beat up by older kids, and there’d be a lot of homophobic slurs.
They didn’t know anything about you at all; it’s just what they said. I found that it’d compress
the time that you’re actually having the shit kicked out of you if you antagonized them by
donning a girl voice.” This defense tactic would bleed into the final verse of his future anthem,
giving himself the happy ending he wasn’t currently experiencing.
After some limited underground success with the skate-core group Mr. Jones in the early 90s,
Brown went solo from 1994 and spent the next few years working on ideas for the
group that would become Wheatus. Since 95 he was toying with the rudiments of “Teenage Dirtbag:”
“The chorus melody and the “oh yeah” part were already in there, and I couldn’t really forget
them. There was something that was really sad and something really sweet and nice about it.
It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime melodies that works for every reason.”
Lyrically Brown reflected back to his childhood and implemented scenery from the 1980s.
Because of his isolated adolescence, and being educated at an all-boys school,
he had lacked the usual coming of age events like dating or prom.
The imagery in the song is instead mostly taken from the movies of John Hughes, while the line:
is evocative of Jennifer Grey’s attire from Dirty Dancing. Despite AC/DC being his adolescent idols,
Iron Maiden were the key group mentioned,
as through albums like Number of the Beast they became the
poster-band for the 80s satanic panic scare.
As such the chorus is a defiant defense for his beloved metal music. “When I
sing “I’m just a teenage dirtbag,” I’m effectively saying: “Yeah, fuck you if you don’t like it.
Just because I like AC/DC doesn’t mean I’m a devil worshipper, and you’re an idiot.””
Musically though, Brown had something extremely specific in mind. “I have vivid memories of
explaining to the producer, Phil, that I wanted Teenage Dirtbag to sound like Metallica, AC/DC,
Paul Simon and James Taylor from the waist up. And then, from the waist down, LL Cool J and Public
Enemy. Like, hip-hop feet with rock’n’roll hands. As a production concept, that’s difficult.” Brown
has in particular cited Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” as a reference point for the acoustic verses,
J Mascis and Sugar style fuzz guitar for the chorus, but with punchy AC/DC drums.
By 1998, the line up of Wheatus would be freshed out by Brown’s brother Peter on bass, Rich Liegey
on drums as well as multi-instrumentalist and producer Philip A. Jimenez.
After recording an album’s worth of demos at Browns’ parents house,
the band were disappointed by the lack of interest from labels.
This was until the group utilized some emerging technology to get “Teenage Dirtbag” out there.
“The internet wasn’t really a thing yet, but we put the song up on something called
Billboard Talent Net – within a week we were the most downloaded song in New York.
We’d been playing little venues. After that, there were three labels at the shows
wanting to sign us.” The group soon signed to Sony, who were more than prepared to release
their demos as a Wheatus’ debut. Instead Brown took the band’s advance and re-recorded the album
to a more professional quality, to truly get the sound that he had imagined in his head.
“Teenage Dirtbag” was released as a single in July 2000.
The song had trouble getting any pop radio play in their home country, not helped by the line:
Slightly over a year since the Columbine school shooting,
that line would be forever censored by a record scratch.
Their label also would’ve wanted Brown to re-record his vocal for broader appeal:
“In America, we were hard to place. Record executives literally said to me, ‘I need you
to re-sing this song more like a guy, because radio won’t have you singing like a girl.’”
While it never entered the US Billboard Hot 100, it peaked at number 7 on the Alternative
chart and was a major hit elsewhere. In the UK it managed to stay at number 2 for two weeks in 2001,
held off by girl group Atomic Kitten and “Whole Again.” But it grabbed
top placing on the Australian, Austrian and Belgian charts.
Despite being the only song many people know by Wheatus,
they earnt an additional top 5 hit in the UK with a cover of Erasure’s “A Little Respect.”
And then bringing the Iron Maiden nod full circle, their definitive frontman Bruce Dickinson supplied
additional vocals to the single version of “Wannabe Gangster.”
Since then “Teenage Dirtbag” has re-entered the UK charts six times between 2011 and 2016,
refreshed in the public consciousness with a barrage of genre-spanning covers.
But the most interesting re-working of “Teenage Dirtbag” was by Wheatus themselves.
In 2000, Brown had lent Sony his ADAT tape of their debut album masters so that it could get
released. In a collision of bad timing, major label apathy and Wheatus leaving the label
in 2006, the tape was never backed up to digital and never returned to him.
Not having access to the master copy of their sole international hit
had forced Wheatus to miss out on licensing opportunities such as appearing in films,
the Rock Band video game series, and being sampled and remixed by various artists.
So in 2020 for the song’s twentieth anniversary the band recreated the song as close as possible.
This meant getting the original band, who’d slowly departed,
back together and trying to remember exactly what they’d done
two decades previous. Issues included working out exactly what that phone synth sample was
and going deep into why the drums sound a little more stereo in the chorus.
The band managed to get it so close to the original recording
that when they uploaded it to YouTube they got a copyright notification from Sony,
which of course, they disputed. While other bands might grow to despise their breakout hit,
Brendan still thinks fondly of “Teenage Dirtbag.” “I always really liked the song,
it’s never worn on me or any of the band members, it’s a challenging song if played correctly, it’s
got this really weird funky slink in the verses that you have to pay attention to. It’s not like
you can just phone it in. It’s an uncompromised collection of what my life has been like, and what
my life was like when I wrote it, and I’m quite happy that it continues saying that to people.”
Since its release, “Teenage Dirtbag” has emerged as an evergreen 2000s standard. It was in the top
50 most played radio songs of the decade in both the UK and Australia. Rarely has there been a
rock-orientated club night, house party or karaoke session where Wheatus didn’t rear their antisocial
head. It’s a song that extols the virtues of heavy metal, of Iron Maiden. Yet is a song
that stands side by side with “How Soon Is Now?”, Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” and My Chemical Romance’s
“I’m Not Okay” in the subgenre of songs about not fitting in, that have helped a generation
fit in. Because that’s the thing: Everyone, at some time or another, has been rejected or alone,
has been a “Teenage Dirtbag,” and Wheatus gave them that much sought after happy ending.
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Thanks for watching. Happy new year. What songs from the 2000s do you think have reached timeless
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