Living the "Teenage Dream"

Hey there KatyCats!

    So, I know that I already posted about the ALBUM Teenage Dream. But I realized that I never posted about the song itself, and since I'm doing songs about love, I figure that I might as well do one of my absolute favorites! So this post is all about my top Katy song, "Teenage Dream".
   I thought I should start with the origins of this song. Katy started her career with an "adolescent state of mind" discovered that after her One of the Boys album that she wanted to keep it that way. While writing "Teenage Dream" she had a "forever young" idea in her head. She looked all over at different artist's takes on teenage love. When she first came out with lyrics about Peter Pan...well "we wanted it to have more edge, more sex." Katy later said. They got stuck for a while and Katy said,

"I thought about my own adolescent years, my own first love. I thought about watching Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo and Juliet' and putting on a little mini disco ball light and just dreaming of Leo. I thought about me and my friends sitting around at slumber parties in the 90’s, giddy even just THINKING about boys. [...] I thought about what Benny said and I listened to the song again, and I was like The Teenagers… that’s such a great word, Teenager. It is a very descriptive word; it packs a lot of emotion and imagery into three syllables. [...] I couldn’t believe after all of our agonizing over 'youth' themes, that we had overlooked such an obvious one – the teenage condition."

    The teenage condition is very obviously love. It's what all teenagers fantasize about. Well, teenage girls anyway. Actually, even though they wouldn't admit it, I think teenage guys are ultimately looking for love, too. Everyone out there is looking for the one special person that they can spend the rest of their lives with. It's a part of who we are and what we want. And as teenagers (aka walking hormones) we will do anything to receive that love that we search so desperately for. Lots of times, we do stupid things and we realize that what we were doing in order to try and "earn" that love, isn't what love is about at all. So we get into another relationship where it feels like you haven't done anything and that love just...blossomed and all of a sudden you experience pure joy. And that's what this song is describing.

    These lyrics are all about the essence of love when you're a teenager. It envelops you and overwhelms you and it becomes the only thing on your mind. And you are infinitely happy. The lyrics "let's go all the way tonight/ no regrets/ just love/ we can dance until we die/ you and i/ we'll be young forever" really capture this well, I think. We as teenagers think (and wish) that we will simply be as young as we are now, forever. We want to just stay in this age of freedom and experimentation and life. We want to just live life and really experience it for the first time ever and one of those ways is through our relationships. And that's what teenage love is all about- a world full of firsts.
    This song has also been covered by tons of people and performed live amazingly well. I just thought I should mention that there is a cover by Ariana Grande on youtube -link here. This cover is amazing and I encourage you to check it out! That has absolutely nothing to do with what I am writing except that it's a cover of "Teenage Dream" but I feel that I need to include it simply because it is awesome and it's something I love.
    So, KatyCats the lesson here is that teenage love is a blissful thing that Katy captured very well in this song. I feel even that it has become an anthem of teenage love. It's what I look to when I want to describe my feelings of love. And I think that was Katy's intention. Well, Katy, great job! KatyCats, this song is the perfect "Teenage Dream".

Live your own Teenage Dreams KatyCats,
-Autumn the Purrfect KatyCat