Rocktober '00s Song #3: "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus (2000)

Third up in our aural rock journey through the '00s is the sublime power pop rocker "Teenage Dirtbag" from New York's Wheatus, released in the summer of 2000.  I chose this song for today, not only because it kicks ass, but also because, like the love interest in the song, I have two tickets to Iron Maiden -- though I'll be seeing them tonight, and not Friday, like in the song.

As I assume the case was for most of you, I first heard this song in May 2001 at a club in Vienna.  The entire place was singing the song, and neither my brother nor I had any idea what it was, but we liked it.  We asked someone who sang it, and they wrongly replied "Weezer" instead of "Wheatus," so I initially thought it was sung by Weezer -- despite the fact that singer Brendan B. Brown sounds nothing like Rivers Cuomo.  I eventually downloaded it, presumably illegally, as was the style in 2001, and realized it was not by Weezer.  I also assumed the lead singer was a woman because of the high range of Brown's voice -- despite the fact that the song is about wanting a girl named Noelle.  Hey, I don't judge.

Anyway, the song was inspired by Brown's experiences when he was a ten-year-old.  In some woods close to his home on Long Island, there was a brutal, Satanic ritualistic killing.  Four teenagers were high on PCP and LSD, when one of them, Ricky Kasso, stabbed another over 30 times and told the victim to swear his love for Satan while the other two watched.  Kasso was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt when he was arrested.  Brown himself was a metalhead, and he was chastised for it, as teachers and parents assumed he was a Satanist simply because a murderer wore an AC/DC t-shirt.  This is the kind of shit kids who listened to heavy metal in the '80s had to deal with.

Of course, the song itself is not about a Satanic ritualistic murder, but instead about being an outcast or an outsider and pining over someone who's probably out of reach, which I think is something we all deal with at some point during our teenage years.  The narrator pines over this girl Noelle, who doesn't know who he is and who dates some douchebag who drives a Camaro and brings a gun to school (though they now put a scratching noise over the "he brings a gun to school" lyric).  The narrator proclaims he's a teenage dirtbag, and he laments the possibility of Noelle listening to Iron Maiden with him.  But then at the end, the tables turn.  It's prom night, and Noelle walks up to our narrator with two tickets to Iron Maiden, inviting him to join him Friday at the concert.

The song was a massive hit everywhere except the United States, where it only reached #7 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart.  This may explain why my brother and I had never heard it before May 2001.  It went to #1 on the pop charts in, you guessed it, Austria, as well as Australia and Belgium (Flanders), and it reached the Top 10 in Belgium (Wallonia), Denmark, the Eurochart, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.  In Australia, it was the #17 song on the decade-end chart for the 2000s.  It reentered the UK pop charts in 2011, 2012, and 2013, reaching the Top 40 again in the first two of those years.

The song was also featured in the 2000 romantic comedy Loser, starring Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, both a year removed from the massively successful comedy American Pie.  Loser didn't do quite as well.  However, the video for "Teenage Dirtbag" features Biggs and Suvari, though the video is a portrayal of the song's lyrics, rather than having anything to do with Loser.