“We’re not saying we’re dirtbags, but we’re grimy characters.” “We’re just teenage lads,” One Direction’s Liam Payne explained in 2013. One Direction, SZA, 5 Seconds of Summer, Phoebe Bridgers, Mary Lambert, All Time Low, Rex Orange County, and Amy Shark have all covered the song in recent years.
These days, it’s embraced by both aging millennials and an entirely new audience of devotees from all across the musical spectrum. But its dark backstory - involving years of Brown getting beaten up by older teenagers as well as a horrific murder that took place in his Long Island hometown when he was young - gives it an unexpected emotional gravity that’s transcended its era. On its surface, it’s a time capsule of Eighties heavy-metal lonerism and oversized bucket hats, which Brown donned for the song’s goofy music video that incorporated scenes from the forgotten Jason Biggs teen comedy Loser. For a single that never even entered the pop charts in the U.S., “Teenage Dirtbag” has become a surprisingly enduring cult standard. Brown is very aware that “Teenage Dirtbag” is his career calling card: Online, to this day, he’ll respond to fans’ queries about the song by granting them “dirtbag for life status.” After rescheduling some of his 20th-anniversary touring plans due to the coronavirus, Brown announced the “Quaranteenage Dirtbag Challenge,” in which fans will submit their own versions of the song, to be then edited into an eventual video.īrown is far from alone in his obsession with the song. Years ago, Brown gave his last personal copy of the masters to his former label, Sony, and he’s never seen them since.įor a musician whose lifelong income is very much dependent on a single song, this is a problem. The album was recorded on a long-defunct transitional format called ADAT. So why, then, is Brendan Brown doing any of this? The short answer: He no longer possesses the master recordings to Wheatus. The end result is an impressive technical feat that no passive listener would ever distinguish from the original. He describes this process as a “fucking pain in the ass.”
His quest has sent him scouring the internet for gear that most closely resembles what the band originally used to record the album. And around that time, there are plans to finally release a decade-in-the-making Wheatus documentary called You Might Die.īrown’s re-recording project has cost him countless thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours spent obsessing over bass lines and synth sounds fans almost certainly never noticed in the first place.
Later this year, the band will release a 20th-anniversary album-length re-recording of Wheatus, which they plan to promote on a fall tour with fellow turn-of-the-21st-century rockers Alien Ant Farm. In an era when hollowed-out streaming revenue has practically forced aging musicians to monetize classic-album anniversaries, Brown is going further than almost anyone. Slater, it soon becomes apparent, is being literal: For the better part of the past two years, the group has been holed up in a basement studio meticulously re-recording every single instrument and vocal part to Wheatus, the band’s 2000 debut that spawned their sole hit, went platinum in the U.K., and charted in a half-dozen countries. “We listen to two things that sound basically identical, and decide which one we like best.”
“This is mostly what we do,” Slater says. It was the low one that was a little off.” “To me, it sounded like it did last night,” says Sterbenz.
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