Twenty-two years on from its release, "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl" is still getting its flowers — from Snail Mail, Sasami and yeule's cover to Meryl Streep's surprise cosign and everything that came before, a humble little Toronto band called Broken Social Scene have been reentering the public lexicon for decades thanks to their solid gold hit. Now, we've got another cover to add to the pile.
IAN SWEET — the indie-pop project of New York City's Jilian Medford — has just submitted her piece of BSS appreciation, along with a very complimentary statement for her reason why:
Broken Social Scene's music has always felt like the equivalent of a hug, and I think at some point everyone has to have *that* moment with "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl." Or maybe you have it more than once. This song hits different for me now than it did when I was actually 17, and I imagine it'll hit a little different each year I get further away from that version of myself. It so poignantly nails the difficulty of trying to exist within the moment of being a teenager while you're simultaneously looking towards the inevitable transitions looming on the horizon. You want to cry.. and you should cry.
Simply put: It. Fucking. Crushes.
And even though covering someone else's work is weird and strange and almost always feels like perhaps it shouldn't be done, I'm willing to say effusively that I never want to escape this song. With this small act, perhaps now I can't! The original is essential, other covers have taken it to amazing places as well, and now I've recorded my version hoping a few more people will get to shout the lyrics at the top of their lungs and FEEL FUCKING INCREDIBLE doing so. Here's hoping a thousand more artists do the same and that this song just never dies.
What a nice way to begin a Thursday. Listen to the cover below.