Somewhat fewer than 300 melodies survive. “26 years and I’m on my way to hell” – Wish by Nine Inch Nails, 17 “I love Rock ‘n Roll,” Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (“knew he must’ve been about 17”), Rolling Stones, I am so glad I got to see them live. Anyway. So I want to make a histogram of all the ages mentioned in pop punk songs, just for fun. 30: Bay Faction – Sasquatch .22, Thanks so much for this awesome resource , Just want you to know I come back to this article whenever I think about age and music, which is quite a lot! "Stop Your Sobbing" was first recorded by The Kinks in 1964. 22 - Lily Allen. Those were Robin Williams' sayings on his TV show Mork & Mindy. 22. They tweaked the lyric, "This is the worst trip since I've been born" to "...I've ever been on" as a wink to acid culture. what songs do you know that mention a specific age in their lyrics? Oldies But Goodies: Songs That Guests of All Ages Will Love from DJ Dos As much as I love hearing (and playing) the hottest tracks of today, there’s a timeless element to the classic songs that came out in the 1950s & ’60s that a lot of modern music lacks. 16 - Highly Suspect. Jeff Jeff Walker, “Up Against The Wall Redneck Mothers”. Family – The Weaver’s Answer 18 by One Direction could be included, as well as She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5 (“Beauty queen of only 18”), a few songs by the smiths: Many thanks to everyone who helped me collect these songs, I massively appreciated it and I couldn’t have done it without you, and I hope you’re happy with the way the list turned out, and I owe you all a mix cd. 17 - Avril Lavigne. i enjoy updating it whenever i hear a new song, and then coming back to it each birthday to see what songs i’ve got this year. 100 Years - Five for Fighting. Thank you for your thoughts! This round-up of the best songs about the beach will have you swaying in the sand, or transported there in your mind if you're landlocked and dreaming of a … I hope this spreadsheet is useful for people. And there are others that are pretty gruesome too. To help you find music seniors love, we’ve rounded up dozens of top hits. This is quite a nice list, and some interesting analysis. This song will stop you dead in your tracks. I examine these trends quantitatively and compare them to other trends, like  how political stances change with age. 14 - Paula Cole. I have this little stupid ritual of listening to a song about my current age every year on my birthday (today) the list is very helpful, 7: Lukas Graham – 7 Years (also mentions 11, 20, 30, 60, 61) 32 Replies to “Data Collection Project: Songs that Mention Being a Specific Age” Justin Zboyovski on September 23, 2014 at 4:41 pm said: Nice list. The characters narrating these songs come across as the creepiest creeps who ever crept. 21 - Hunter Hayes. ", With Bernie Taupin, Martin co-wrote the #1 hits "We Built This City" and "These Dreams." 18 And Life - Skid Row. I do just want to point out that you have “Across the Sea” by Weezer under “10” but it’s actually about an 18-year-old girl, specifically a Japanese girl who wrote Rivers Cuomo a fan letter. Today she’s 26 — so it’s the Charlie Daniels Band. Nice list. He was Warned, Civilian Victimization and Rebel Territorial Control in Sierra Leone. Also – 21 and Invincible by Something Corporate! for example: travis - why does it always rain on me - "is it because i lied when i was 17?" The Dark Knight, The Joker y Game Theory » Mejores películas Online, The Dark Knight, The Joker, and Game Theory, Black History Month Heroes: Tattooed Prisoner from “The Dark Knight” – Tester, Data Collection Project: Songs that Mention Being a Specific Age, “I could dress in black and read Camus, smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth, yeah that would be a scream, if I was 17” (I Don’t Want To Get Over You – The Magnetic Fields), “I played video games in a drunken haze, I was 17 years young” (This Year – The Mountain Goats). – benf. Since the list is US-centric, I use the 2006 World Values Survey from the US and graph five-year moving averages of three forms of political participation: joining a boycott, signing a petition, and voting in the last election. You can count ‘Innocent’ by Taylor Swift in 32 (“32, and still growing up now”), which is the song I’ve been hanging on to for a while now. This brings me to the last point about this list: how creepy some of these songs are. From a political point of view these individuals are still young, but their days of being represented in popular music are done. I decided that each song could only be on the list once, and each song would be listed under the most prominent age they mentioned. Thanks for this list. Thanks to my infectious enthusiasm/campaign of intimidation, I started getting more and more text messages from people who’d heard a song they thought I might be interested in. Songs that Build an Appreciation of Diversity Around the World Children's Songs and Educational Music for preschool, elementary, middle and high school. “She’s Only 18” by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, “She’s 19 Years Old” by Buddy Guy, “Goin’ Blind” by Kiss… the list, quite literally, goes on. When you peruse this list, take a look at the lyrics for ‘Stray Cat Blues’ by the Rolling Stones, or ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’ by Neil Sedaka. These judgment calls led to many difficult conversations and much bitterness. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. This was a very helpfull list, thank you very much. Musical performance - Musical performance - The Middle Ages: The tradition of sung prayers and psalms extends into the shadows of early civilization. 21@12 - Hot Hot Heat. There’s a wealth of wit and wisdom about the ageing process in music – here’s 50 songs about growing up to guide you through the sometimes painful process… 1. Knowing whether a song ‘clearly mentioned an age’ was just my subjective intuition – was there the risk of low inter-coder reliability if I asked anyone else to help? He’s thirty-four and drinking in a honky tonk, Was thinking of doing something similar and stumbled upon this. The more unconventional form of participation (boycotts) remains fairly steady although it declines later in life. - "nobody likes you when you're 23" nine inch nails - wish - "26 years on my way to hell" Answer Save. First, let’s look at the overall frequency of songs by age. (Facebook) 18. Pete Townshend’s “Slit Skirts” also mentions being 34. Does your life just grow steadily less… inspiring… as you get older? This morning I was thinking about how often I hear the number 17 in songs. You can download the list here, and below, I go into more detail on three points: 1) How a surprisingly thorny measurement problem was resolved. Thank you so much for making this spreadsheet! Stray Cat Blues this song has a killer groove going on, and the lyrics are great http://lyricsmusic.name/rolling-stones-lyrics/beggars-banquet/stray-cat-blues.html. “he killed a policeman when he was 13” – i want the one i can’t have. Stereophonics 23 & 26 – My own worst enemy. Now it’s time to start looking at the results. The interesting point here is that the number of songs about being a particular age drops precisely at the age where people in theory become adults (18). Walking On Sunshine. 3) Quite frankly, it’s impossible to assemble a list like this and not notice that a lot of the  lyrics involve older men talking about younger women in a – what seems to me at least –  creepy way. We have some ages 68 58 54 and so on. With the codebook in place, data collection could begin. An incredibly moving song about aging, it relates a feeling of being tired and drained in the face of major changes. On my spreadsheet I added the song 39 by Tenacious D, under the year 39. Hopefully that gives you a flavor of the list. For your 18th birthday present, you get the right to vote, but you lose your connection to popular music. There is an average of 1.9 songs per year, but by age 19, you’ve already used up more than half the songs on the list. This list may be about aging, but that doesn’t mean it’s all about maturity. 1985 - Bowling for Soup. I think examining this fact is important. But that search criteria isn’t easy to implement. “Just The Way You Are” is a great reminder that you are beautiful (whether you are a girl or guy, even though the song’s lyrics are targeted at girls), just the way you are. The first age without a song is 34, so if there are any 34yr old songwriters reading this, please fill that gap in the market and I’ll add you to the list immediately. Happy birthday(s). The old adage "write what you know" applies to music, too — and a lot of the time, that means including references to an era's current technology in pop songs. “Or even at 25, you gotta start sometime.”. Hey, it … Passenger – 27. Here is the church, here is the steeple - see if you can identify these lyrics that reference church. As much as I think the list contains a lot of nice birthday songs, it also contains some evidence of which attitudes towards women are present in popular culture. (Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon. This pop song is a perfect combo of a peppy tune and catchy lyrics, making it the band's most successful song and a fun one for celebrating. Why does being 17 inspire so much more music than being 27 or 37? Another explanation would be that the music industry focuses on younger and younger acts because they’re easier to package, and so artists probably exist who are writing songs about being middle-aged, but they’re just not as easy to find. The song “I Don’t Like Mondays” was written by Geldolf and is about a 16 year-old girl, Brenda Ann Spencer, who carried out a shooting spree on an elementary school in 1979. 2) Some (younger) ages get mentioned in dozens of songs, other (older) ages are barely    referenced. There are quite a lot of songs out there and some of them are quite long too. The final entry on the list is “Ironic” by Alanis Morrissette, which mentions being 98. Songs about getting older. Willie Nelson, “ September Song”. Definitely one in the creeping-on-teenage-girls category. In order to help you enrich your list I give you “18 til I die” by Brian Adams! I don’t think you’d want to read too much into the correlations between songs and forms of political participation – just because these things happen at the same time doesn’t mean they are linked – but it’s a nice illustration of the wide-reaching impact of turning 18. It became the Pretenders first single 15 years later, leading to a relationship between Ray Davies and Chrissie Hynde. The song itself embodies all those qualities and endures as a quintessentially ’80s dance-floor masterpiece for the ages. Posted at 12:10h in Uncategorized by 0 Comments. I’m trying to work up the nerve to tweet Coolio directly and ask him which age he would say it’s mostly about, but I’m worried he might think that’s weird. For example, why is any age over 19 basically ‘past your peak’ in song terms? He’s 23 and should know better, but all he wants to … There are a couple of songs from a female perspective (“Fifteen” by Rilo Kiley, and “Fifteen (Nothing Happened)” by Standard Fare) but the vast majority are delivered by men. 24: Pat Stansik – I’m 24 First, I decided that there had to be an actual number in the lyrics or the title. But that’s how the list was assembled. I might have gone with songs mentioning multiple ages going to ages that aren’t mentioned as much (100 years by five for fighting would be under 99). The Ozzy Osbourne song "Mr. Crowley" is about Aleister Crowley, a British practitioner of dark magic in the early 1900s. I believe the singer is female but i am not sure because i can't recall all the lyrics. Song lyrics also express judgments—and even conflicts—about lifestyles, values, and appearances. Nice job. I know there is a song where the singer talks about being a certain age and what happens at that age and then talks about a few more ages within someone's life. 20 Best Songs About Complicated Love and Confusing Relationships 1. , thanks so much! I don’t know”, because I think he’s really singing about hoping to be 24, but there are compelling arguments for listing it under 23. I cant seem to figure out how to read it. Here house was located across the street from Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, CA and she opened fire from a window of her home. 23: Relient K – Maintain Consciousness (also mentions 17, 18 and 19) The distribution is left-bounded at zero (the first song is “Letter to My Unborn” by 2pac), and is uni-modal. There’s a whole lot more living after that. I might have gone with songs mentioning multiple ages going to ages that aren’t mentioned as much (100 years by five for fighting would be under 99). This involved listening to the radio and making a lot of notes. Don’t Blink by Kenny Chesney is a song about a guy who’s 102 if you want to add it. And I was definitely going to need help. I worked on getting a more valid and reliable coding scheme together. The most commonly mentioned age is 17. A huge UK hit in the autumn of 1967, this four-and-a-half minute song summarised many of that year's fads: ornate instrumentation, several themes, … 20 Answers. He’s singing about a woman who is 39 and mentions the number 39 multiple times, but he does mention once that he is 49. 17 - MK. Gotta pick one for 33 soon, my birthday is in July! Relevance. That original version had the lyrics: "Don't tell my heart, my achy, breakin' heart...". Thanks for posting it! 21 - Delilah. Just what I was looking for. In the synagogue, however, the sung prayers were often unaccompanied. If you know of a song that isn’t yet included, please add it to the archives if needed, then add a link to the song on this page. Perhaps, MJ Hibbett seems to say. Pingback: MS Patient Columnist Reflects on 39 Years, 13 Years at a Time, Pingback: 39 Years and Counting — on at Least 39 More Great Ones - BioNewsFeeds, I’ve been doing the same thing for my daughter’s birthday since she was 15 (“Hundred Years” — which still brings tears to my eyes). Playlist for songs about ages Pentangle – The Trees They Do Grow High. You can’t not beam when this one’s on. , Whats my age again by Blink 182. The next problem was what to do about songs that mentioned multiple ages. John Martin. Top songs for every generation. This data collection strategy is biased towards my own listening habits, and those of my friends, and so particular genres are over-represented. Links and brief excerpts may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given and appropriate and specific direction to the original content is included. Esther Phillips – Aged and Mellow. A monthly update on our latest interviews, stories and added songs, I Was Only Nineteen (A Walk In the Light Green), Michaela Strachan You Broke My Heart (When I Was 12).