Every person has a song. A song that they can feel. A song that touches you. A song that flows over them like syrup flows over pancakes on a cozy Sunday. A song so familiar to you, you could call it yours. For me, that song is American Teen, by Khalid.

American Teen basically outlines my life. It, in teen language, hits me in my feels. It’s so relatable to everyone in my age bracket. The first time I listened to the song I was in the car at 11 pm with the windows down on a breezy summer night. I was sandy from the beach and had salty hair. I was scrolling through spotify and it came on. We listened, skeptically. After the one loop I hit repeat. After the first time every word to the song fell into my heart, and have stayed there since. This was the song highlighting one of by best times with my boyfriend, but more like my best friend. I stuck my head out the window and screamed these lyrics as I looked out across Hampton beach, only seen by street lights and the haze of the stars.

My favorite lyrics of American Teen are the first. “Living a good life full of goodbyes, my eyes are on the grey skies, sayin’ I don’t want to come home tonight.” These lyrics highlight every concept of being a teenager. My life is good honestly, but there is constantly people coming and going, I don’t really have steady friends. The best things happen at night, and I find myself always saying, I don’t want to go home. When there is so many things out there to be doing at any time of day, why stay at home.

Overall, it’s my song. I’m sure there are 50,000 teens in America that feel the same way. American teen makes me want to drop everything I’m doing, drive a little too fast on the highway, and stay out way too late. This is the life of many, it’s a teen thing, and I love that Khalid captures that at the end with saying “I’m proud to be American.”

So many of you are boring, stuck up or just plain care too much. Here’s some advice. Listen to Khalid. Mess things up. Do stupid things. So many people my age are so focused on being an adult and growing up, forgetting that these are the only years you have to embarrass yourself, be unprofessional, stay out too late. Just get out there and do things you wouldn’t do, it’s part of being an American Teen. That is what American Teen portrays, and I think everyone should feel that.