If you think about it, there’s something about a coming of age story that sucks us in like Black and Decker Hand Vac, whether in film, literature or music. spreading it allows us to relate to the protagonist on a deeper levelsince we get to shadow the person or character on their journey of triumphs and defeats.
A typical coming of age story documents a child or young person growing into themselves after being faced with personal challenges, which a long list of musicians have done masterfully on albums.
Think Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hilland how she invited listeners on her path of maturation while dealing with a tough, all-consuming relationship. Or The Strokes’ LP Is This It for how lead singer Julian Casablancas sang about his 20-something self before the band achieved stardom.
To put it plainly, we love coming of age albums around these parts, and these are some of our favorites.
The Suburbs — Arcade Fire
Years before controversy surrounding lead singer Win Butler dimmed Arcade Fire’s relevance, one of the band’s lasting statements was 2010’s cinematic concept album, The Suburbs. Lyrically constructed around Butler and his brother’s upbringing in The Woodlands, Texas, the record is one that reflects the hopes, dreams, and bored longing of suburban living.
Dwelling somewhere between glammy new-wave and apocalyptic candle ember folk instrumentation, Arcade Fire plants a garden of genres together with the hope of flowers growing.
What arrives includes the driving wanderlust of the title track, the emotionally turbulent punk-rock of “Month of May,” technology killing innocence on “Deep Blue,” and the wonder of anticipation lost with “We Used To Wait.”
While artistic metaphor is in ample supply The Suburbs, digging further shows simple coming-of-age growing painslike wanting to appreciate a child’s moments quickly gone, the loss of innocent hopes and dreams, as well as the desire to share what’s precious with your sacred ones before war or time intervenes.
The Suburbs paints with nostalgic wax and grows up just as quickly.
Chris Hedden
He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Distributed in suburban homes like bomb shelter supplies in the 1950s, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper sounded an alarm call announcing the arrival of hip-hop to white America.
Prior to its 1988 release, the duo had experienced mild success with their debut album, Rock the House and its “I Dream of Jeannie”-sampling single “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble.”
But “Parents Just Don’t Understand”—which earned them the first ever Grammy for rap music—puts a fine and permanent point on generational cultural estrangement that continues to endure today.
The fact that it was this relatively new musical form that was underscoring the divide between children and their parents made it that much more powerful.
But the lyrics to the song took its appeal to another level, first with a story about a son enduring his mother’s uncool clothing purchases, and then a second about borrowing dad’s car while he’s out of town.
There is tremendous universality in teenagers seeking peer approval, defining themselves through their clothing, and, of course, testing the boundaries of adulthood. Will Smith made it catchy, funny and far too relatable all at once.
What’s remarkable about the album is that so many of its songs are like that; from its “A Nightmare on Elm Street”-opening track to “Time to Chill” to “My Buddy.”
So, listeners felt like the duo was talking to them as a peer and person who might still be going through these trials, even after experiencing enough success that the Queen of Spain knows what the Fresh Prince’s real name is.
Leaders of the News School, and especially The Pharcyde, would just a few years later offer additional layers of sophistication to rap music’s portraits of adolescent life that were less limited from the urban backgrounds of some of their counterparts.
But DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince were 20 when the album came out, which means they were making music for teenagers while being teenagers, and that’s why it still holds such a powerful sway today.
When listening to He’s The DJyou don’t just flash back to the first time you listened to it, you flash back to when you went through the experiences that they are rapping about.
Todd Gilchrist
Enema Of The State — blink-182
Blink-182’s music has always been tinged with a hint of immaturity, although it’s often much more than a hint. That immaturity and teenage humor is what earned them their fame in the mid-’90s. When they released their third and most successful album, Enema of the State in 1999, that teenage immaturity started to take a slight detour into reality.
Not only did their five-times platinum third album touch on typical themes of growing up, namely on “Going Away To College,” but it also drew upon much darker, more serious themes that force one to grow up much faster than they maybe wanted to.
I’m talking about “Adam’s Song,” which discusses themes of suicide and mental illness, straying far from their typical subject matter.
If ever there was an album that reckons with the idea of growing up and fully and completely encompassing the meaning of coming-of-age, blink-182’s Enema of the State that’s it.
Lacey Cohen
good kid, mAAd city — Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 opus, good kid, mAAd citydid what Rakim did when he and Eric B released their album Paid In Full in 1987, and what Nas did with his 1994 gem Illmatic in the ’90s: Lamar created a new blueprint for rappers who wanted to be lyricalthose who desired to be storytellers and use poetic prose to detail struggle and growth.
The title of the LP alone sets the scene for Lamar’s story of growing up in Compton, California, as he uses each song to illustrate the balancing act of avoiding dangerous street life and learning neighborhood politics for survival.
Sometimes Lamar is successful in backing away from trouble, other times he sprints towards it, which many of us have experienced while navigating the obstacles of adolescence.
In the song “The Art of Peer Pressure,” for example, Lamar raps about being with his friends and doing things that he wouldn’t normally do, like gangbanging, if he weren’t with them. “I’ve never been violent / Until I’m with the homies,” he raps.
The album continues with the West Coast wordsmith leaping over life’s hurdles in some parts, ducking near misses in others, all while wheeling around in his parents’ van and enjoying his youth.
Daryl Nelson
Pure Heroine — Lorde
Lorde came onto the scene in 2013 full of teenage angst and ready to dominate the 2010s alt-pop scene. A title like Pure Heroine suggested the singer saw herself as a saviorbut the tracks, submerged in anxiety, revealed more complexity. Behind her facade was a girl who didn’t fit in at lavish parties and worried about getting older.
From driving around her hometown on “400 Lux” to finding solace in her friendships in “Teams,” Lorde spoke to a generation of teenagers as she grew up alongside them. With the right balance of darkness and vulnerability, Pure Heroine became the soundtrack of my high school experience.
Gina Wurtz
Ready To Die — The Notorious BIG
Growing up in New York, music wasn’t background noise, it was blood flow. The city moved to a beat you couldn’t tune out even if you wanted to. It blasted from car stereos, spilled out of record stores (remember those?), and rattled club walls where I first figured out that maybe music writing was my lane.
When Ready to Die hit in ’94, it sounded more like a takeover than a debut. A voice rose out of Brooklyn calling itself the illest, and for once, the city believed it. That voice was Christopher Wallace (aka The Notorious BIG)—and his skills were, as he said, “Unbelievable.”
Every track built the world Biggie came from and the one he was about to dominate. “Things Done Changed” laid out the new reality of NYC in the ’90s; “Gimme the Loot” was pure urgency; “Juicy” was the ghetto-fab American dream.
His flow was conversational but razor sharp—effortless in a way that made everyone else suddenly sound dated. Ready to Die redefined East Coast rap and re-centered hip-hop around storytelling, detail, and truth. It was the sound of a maturing genre, even if its greatest new voice never got the chance to.
My world looked nothing like his. I wasn’t dodging cops (often); I was a Jewish uptown girl with my dad’s Amex, a notebook full of rhymes, and too much attitude for my own good.
But when Biggie rapped about making the change from a “common thief to up close and personal with Robin Leach,” I felt like a proud homie—a sentiment that still resonates 30 years later.
Every young person understands that hunger. That mix of pride and paranoia that comes from wanting more than you’re supposed to, and that’s the part that still guts me: Ready to Die was the only album he released while alive since Life After Death came days after he was killed.
Big Poppa’s debut ended up being his whole story—rise, reign, and reckoning. It’s a coming of age record, as well as a reminder that becoming who you are can cost everything, but it’s worth it. And if you don’t know, now you know.
Sarah Polonsky
Siamese Dream — The Smashing Pumpkins
This humongous album and its absolutely gigantic sound, rang out like rolling thunder throughout my adolescence, a formative musical experience that showed teenage me just how transcendent and powerful music can be. Equally, Siamese Dream carried a certain balance of rock aggression, angst, and introspection that mirrored my own coming of age.
I heard this from the opening blast of “Cherub Rock,” Billy Corgan’s own tale of feeling like an outcast in the early ’90s grunge scene, and being stifled by the pressure to conform. Similarly, “Mayonaise” grapples with self-doubt while questing for self-discovery, while “Today” and “Disarm” find meaning among that fiery emotional chaos that defines adolescence.
Angus Thomas Paterson