When you load up Spotify, a great big chunk of the time you can’t think what to play, right? You default back to your old favourites, those albums and songs you played on repeat when you first discovered you could make them yours.
This isn’t about guilty pleasures; it’s about those songs you’ll still be listening to when you’re old and in your rocking chair. So, enter Teenage Kicks – a playlist series that sees bands running through the music they listened to in their formative years.
Next up, Haley Shea from Sløtface.
My Chemical Romance – Dead!
I so vividly remember watching the MTV music video countdown on a Saturday morning in 6th grade when ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ came on. And my mind was blown. I had very recently started listening to Queen for the first time, and I remember thinking, “this is our Queen”. I loved the theatricality and darkness of it all, and ‘Dead!’ is by far the track I listened to the most on my Discman, being angry at the world and rocking out to the guitar solo.
Velvet Underground – Pale Blue Eyes
As a teenager, I was pretty obsessed with trying to get as encyclopaedic an overview as possible of punk and rock, especially the punk from New York. I brought the album ‘The Velvet Underground’ with me on a long family holiday and listened to it a lot in the car, sat in the back seat there, and I can still feel the chills that crept up my arms as I heard this song for the first time. I felt like Lou Reed was singing directly into my ear and was so curious as to how I could make music that felt like that.
The Wombats – Kill The Director
One of my absolute favourite albums through my teenage years. I loved how they wrote such clever lyrics and had such a lovely bounce to their music; still a huge fan. Saw them with a group of my friends in my home town of Stavanger when I was sixteen and fought tooth and nail for the drumstick that got tossed to the crowd. Still have it!
Bon Iver – Skinny Love
I listened to this song and this Bon Iver album obsessively, especially the summer in middle school that I got my first boyfriend. Would just walk around listening to it and drift off romanticising my life.
Los Campesinos! – There Are Listed Buildings
My absolute favourite band. Really fell in love with them by listening a lot to a recording of their Tiny Desk Concert. To this day, my biggest role models lyrically and as songwriters. Again, the lyrics were what really roped me in.
Laura Marling – Ghosts
This was one of the first new songs I was desperate to learn on guitar because I loved it so much, so I spent hours in my loft bedroom of the house I grew up in practising it and learning it.
Of Monsters And Men – Little Talks
The only bar/club my friends and I had any interest in turning 18 so we could go to was a place called Checkpoint Charlie. I have danced to this song so, so many times on nights out with my best high school friends, as this was on their very much repeated playlist for YEARS. Fond memories of shouting “Hey!” with absolutely no reservation.
Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK
Covered this song with one of my first bands in one of my first gigs ever. The irony of performing this song as a very rule-following 13-year-old girl under a giant cross at the Christian youth centre did not escape me, even then.
Fiona Apple – Valentine
I looked up to very few musicians who were women in my teen years, probably because I didn’t see as many of them when trying to absorb as much rock history and new rock/indie as I could, but when I discovered Fiona Apple, I fell head over heels, and still think she is an absolute genius. This song and album are up there with my favourites, and I felt so lucky to get new Fiona Apple when I was a teenager.
Taken from the March 2023 issue of Upset. Sløtface’s EP ‘AWAKE / ASLEEP’ is out now.
