The lyrics of the song state that Liesl is a young girl at the beginning of her womanhood, and that she can depend on Rolf for guidance, because he is a good year older.
This quatrain was originally written as the verse intro to Climb Ev'ry Mountain but reassigned to the Sixteen Going on Seventeen reprise later on.
[5] State Farm Insurance released an advertisement campaign, featuring a remix of the show tune as a rock song.
[citation needed] The song was used as the outro music for "Tea Leaves," a fifth-season episode of the US television series Mad Men.
The "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" scene is featured on The Orville episode "If the Stars Should Appear" when Klyden asks to see something to make him happy in addition to eating rocky road ice cream as "depression food" following an argument with Bortus.