Teen Age Riot
by Sonic Youth
- 156
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 29
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Thurston Moore explained that "Teen Age Riot" was about appointing J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. as the group's de facto alternative dream president. Moore sings most of the song and opens its main section with a fast, distorted riff after 80 seconds of hypnotic guitar and spoken vocals from Kim Gordon. Moore's and Lee Ranaldo's guitars were tuned unconventionally. The song was the first single from Daydream Nation, released in 1988. It was Sonic Youth's first song to get real airplay on modern rock radio. In the United States it debuted at number 28 on the Alternative Airplay chart in the issue dated December 24, 1988, and peaked at number 20 in February 1989. It spent nine weeks on the chart.
The band directed the video themselves. It includes clips of Mascis, Mark E. Smith, Johnny Thunders, Neil Young, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Sun Ra, Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Kiss among others. The opening section was cut from the video, and also from some live performances.
"Teen Age Riot" was also the last song Sonic Youth played live. It closed the set of their final show at the SWU Music & Arts festival in Paulínia, Brazil, on November 14, 2011.
Teen Age Riot runs at 156 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in vivace territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.54 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 385 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.