Tunes That Got You Through Your Teens

various album covers

We recently asked listeners to send us their personal stories about a time when music came to their rescue, particularly when they were growing up. We got hundreds of notes — some of them moving, some of them funny. But we were most struck by everyone's boundless love and enthusiasm for music and its ability to make us feel the weight of our lives like nothing else.

Teen years seem to be the time when people are most open to discovering music, or the time when they come to realize its power. From the stories we got, songs have helped define our early crushes, frustrations, anger, love, boredom. Through it all, time and time again, people found that music helped them to better understand their own feelings, and guided them through the direction they chose to take with their lives.

On this edition of All Songs Considered, we share some of the stories we heard and the music behind them.