“Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus

"Teenage Dirtbag" was Wheatus's first single, released in the summer of 2000, and it's Brendan B. Brown turning a memory from his own childhood into an underdog anthem. Brown, the band's guitarist and singer, wrote it on his own.

The trick is in the contrast: a thin, reedy vocal spilling out an awkward kid's yearning over a light strum, then the drums kick the door in and the chorus goes full power-pop singalong. It's a pop-punk sob story that works because it never pretends to be cool. Columbia had a worldwide smash on its hands: four weeks at number one in Australia, number two in the UK, and five million copies sold around the globe by 2014.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.