Teenage tragedy song

[1] Notable examples of teenage tragedy songs include "Teen Angel" by Mark Dinning (1959), "Tell Laura I Love Her" by Ray Peterson (1960), "Ebony Eyes" by the Everly Brothers (1961), "Last Kiss" by Wayne Cochran (1961), "Dead Man's Curve" by Jan and Dean (1964), and "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las (1964).

[5] Prison ballads (such as the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley", based on a folk song about a real murder) and gunfighter ballads (such as Johnny Cash's "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" and Marty Robbins' "El Paso") were also popular during the teenage tragedy song's heyday; "El Paso" was followed at #1 by two consecutive teenage tragedy songs, "Running Bear" and "Teen Angel".The teenage tragedy genre's popular era began with "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots" by the Cheers, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

[6] Teenage tragedies featured specific thematic tropes such as star-crossed lovers, reckless youth, eternal devotion, suicide, and despair over lost love, along with lyrical elements that teens of the time could relate to their own lives[5] such as dating, motorcycles and automobiles, and disapproving parents or peers.

Zemke also speculates that the popularity of teenage tragedy songs may be due in part to the many publicized deaths of young musicians and actors during their period of prominence, including those of Sam Cooke, Johnny Ace, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper.

[9]As popular music and the society it mirrored changed from the late 1960s onward, the themes of teenage tragedy songs carried on in different forms and styles.

In 1979, the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays",[20] inspired by the Grover Cleveland school shooting in San Diego earlier that year,[21] reached No.

Some songs merely updated the sound of the previous era, such as "Racing Car" by Dutch group Air Bubble (1976), while others used the melodic and stylistic tropes of teen tragedy in tougher, grittier settings, as in the Ramones' "You're Gonna Kill That Girl" (1977) and "7-11" (1981), and the Misfits' "Saturday Night" (1999).