Teenage Kings

Album: Nothing to Lose (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • This uptempo tune was penned by the Emblem3 trio with songwriters Savan Kotecha, Rami Yacoub and Carl Falk, who are responsible for One Direction's hit tunes "What Makes You Beautiful," "One Thing" and "Live While We're Young."
  • The song was inspired by the movie Project X about three teens who plan to gain popularity by throwing an epic party, but their scheme quickly escalates out of their control. "It's like a nerdy freshman that goes to a sick party," Wes Stromberg of Emblem3 told MTV News. "My perspective is like it's coming from a nerd because he's pretending to be like a teenage king at this party."
  • Drew Chadwick of Emblem3 told the story behind the song to Artist Direct: "That one is based off the summer of 2008," he said. "I was sixteen-years-old, and Wes was fifteen-years-old. Basically, our parents let us do whatever we wanted. We'd just go to these crazy parties all the time. My house was actually like the party house of our city back in Washington. My mom is cool. The song is based off some of the parties we'd go to back in high school. I had this whole theme in my head. It's basically about reliving that dream of when we were younger. We were broke. We weren't anything like kings, but we felt like kings. We made the best out of what we had. The song talks about this pool party like it's all fancy, but we weren't rich. In actuality, the pool was this little blowup pool in my backyard [Laughs]. There's nothing fancy about it. It's a flashback to the summer of 2008, which was the craziest summer of my life."

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