The Teenagers on the eve of their first Australian tour checked in with Undercover to have a chat about fun, alcohol and profanities.
In fact, fun and alcohol fuelled the band’s early days.“At the very beginning, we didn’t even think of starting a band,” Teenager Michael Szpiner told Undercover. “We were just at Christmas having fun and being a bit drunk and we just did music for fun. We didn’t expect anything, so there was no real inspiration for starting the band, except for alcohol and fun.”
“We are just getting from surprise and then we were like maybe we will release a 7”, and then we thought okay we’ll do an album, then one day someone said you’re going to tour the world, so we’re like okay!”
The band achieved notoriety as being one of those “controversial” acts, with their misogynistic laden single ‘Homecoming’, which features the line “I f*cked my American c*nt,” but Szpiner insists any controversy was a misunderstanding by language-barrier.
“We didn’t know that ‘c*nt’ was so so offensive, we just thought it was like ‘f*ck’ or ‘sh!t’, so we just wrote it because it was funny instead of saying ‘b!tch’.
“It was just an innocent mistake. It wasn’t made to shock everyone, because a lot of people that we’ve met just say this word and don’t give a f*ck about it.”
In fact, most of the band’s songs are from imagination land. “I think two out of twelve [songs] are autobiographical,” he explains. “But the rest of them are from a fantasy world.”
“Just think of your own teenage years if you were not the cool guy in high school. We just imagined what it feels like to have cool adventures like this.”
The band’s songs can come from anywhere. Take the song Scarlett Johansen for example, “We’re not a massive massive fan of her, but she was the girl of 2006 I think and she’s quite beautiful, so we just looked up some stuff about her on Wikipedia and we just thought we’ll just write a song about her.”
Notice a sexual side to these youngster’s music? Szpiner said of his sexual side, “We’re French! Of course we [have it]!”
“Why do you think we started a band?” he says with a certain you-know-what-I'm-talking-about-wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of tone.
The band’s debut album ‘Reality Check’ is out now. You can catch them on their first Australasian tour in December and January at:
DECEMBER
27 - Rollercoaster Festival, Perth, WA (day)
27 - Capitol Theatre, Perth, WA (night)
30 - Pyramid Festival, Philip Island, VIC
31 -Manning Bar (Purple Sneakers), Sydney, NSW
JANUARY
9 - Kings Arm Tavern, Auckland, New Zealand
10 - SFBH, Wellington, New Zealand
