Paramore’s Hayley Willaims and Lil Nas are the latest to hop on the Wheatus Teenage Dirtbag TikTok trend as the song goes viral.
You don’t have to wait long for TikTok to coin a new trend, one week it was Lizzo’s ‘About Damn Time’ dance and this week it’s all about the 2000 hit ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus.
Teenage Dirtbag TikTok Trend
The American rock band is having a resurgence for modern-day adults as they reminisce on their teen years as the catchy song has been claimed as the anthem for people to share their own ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ experiences.
TikTok creators have been posting videos of themselves singing the first part of the song ‘she doesn’t give a damn about me’, before sliding into pictures of videos of themselves from their teen years, allowing viewers to see how they have, or haven’t, changed.
Millennials are particularly loving this as they look back on their alternative and emo days in the 00s or people reveal pictures of themselves drinking alcohol, getting tattoos and getting up to crazy anctics.
Over 350,000 videos have been made using the sound and the hashtag #teenagedirtbag now has over 420 million views, at the time of writing.
Lil Nas and Paramore Hop on Teenage Dirtbag TikTok trend
However, some of the most iconic videos have to come from celebrities hopping on the trend and sharing some of their best teenage moments.
The likes of Joe Jonas, Lil Nas, Hayley Williams from Paramore, Charli XCX, among others have now taken part in the trend and the nostalgic photos they’ve shared are everything.
Wheatus have also hopped on the trend of their namesake with their lead singer Brendan Brown sharing his own take on the trend.
The band also shared a video to their Instagram account saying they can’t believe they’re ‘big on the internet’ after re-recording their original songs during the COVID-19 pandemic, including re-recording their iconic new millennium hit, ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, on its 20th anniversary.
The iconic song got its inspiration back in the 1980s, according to Brown, when he spoke to Tone Deaf about it in 2012.
He said: ‘It came from the summer of 1984 on Long Island, when I was 10 years old. That summer in the woods behind my house, there was a Satanic, drug-induced ritual teen homicide that went down; and the kid who did it was called Ricky Kasso, and he was arrested wearing an AC/DC T-shirt.
‘That made all the papers, and the television, obviously; and here I was, 10 years old, walking around with a case full of AC/DC and Iron Maiden and Metallica – and all the parents and the teachers and the cops thought I was some kind of Satan worshipper. So that’s the backdrop for that song.’