“There’s no Teenage Dirtbag without this murder in the summer of 1984.”

For many, Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus captures the quintessential American high school experience. But for the song’s writer Brendan Brown, Teenage Dirtbag represents a fantasy adolescence that he was robbed of after a gruesome murder happened in his home town.

Listen to the full story of the song — and the surprising reception it got outside of the United States — in a video originally published on VICE, in 2021.

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