How Pop Music Became the Soundtrack to the Quarter Life Crisis

Those feelings continued steadily until only a few years ago, when something began to shift. Maybe it began with the appearance of Lorde, and the way Pure Heroine carefully stitched teen angst together with a sense of endlessly discussed "maturity". That pleasure was easy to justify. So was E-MO-TION, Carly Rae Jepsen's 2015 thinking-girl instant classic. Yes, this was a woman delivered to us through the sticky birth canal of reality TV to give us "Call Me Maybe", but that album was different — right? My Taylor Swift stage was more tricky: 1989 was a pop culture juggernaut anyone could be excused for liking, but my devotion to Red and Speak Now were clearer outliers.

By the end of last year, pop music was my exclusive interest. Gwen, Flume, Adele, Selena, One Direction, Justin, Ariana and Miley were all I listened to. I didn't mix them with doses of Angel Olson or Sunflower Bean, I took it straight. I stopped going to gigs. I'd rather say in, save my money for stadium tours, sit on my bed relistening to my Perfect Pop playlist, caught somewhere between delight and anguish, thinking: Is this what everyone else felt at 13?

The appeal of pop music doesn't need to be explained, and this isn't an article about realising I liked it and learning to not be a dick. I wasn't listening to these artists because they were catchy, or even because they were good, I was listening to them because they spoke to something inside me I was having trouble communicating myself. I am currently 29, at the end of the year I'll turn 30, and as that Scorpio moon draws closer, my pop playlist grows.

Speaking to Noisey in 2015 Dr. Jamie Goodwin-Uhler — who had published several studies on the psychology of fan culture — suggested at the pull of adults to pop music was a way for us to "recreate the kind of teenage abandonment that we (as adults) wonder to be long-lost." He argued that our attraction to pop allowed us to re-experience the "youthful, vital energy" that we've lost in our daily life. That thinking suggests my swollen obsession is escapism: part of the the kidulting phenomenon that inspires boutiques that sell bubblegum scented pens to people born in the 80s. But it also assumes I'm searching for a feeling that is lost. When in reality, these songs are allowing me to explore emotions that have never felt more immediate.

So much of pop music takes place in unknown spaces: you don't know who you're supposed to love or how, what people expect from you or where to go next. For tweens and teens, those questions dominate their lives. But they're also obsessions that come calling again at the end of your 20s. While Justin Bieber albums don't directly address issues like, have I built a gilded cage of replica-mid century furniture and a phone contract I don't know how to cancel? they do speak to nuanced feelings of life not looking the way you were told it would. When Bibes sang, "We're under pressure / Seven billion people in the world trying to fit in / Keep it together / Smile on your face even though your heart is frowning," on 2012's Believe he was an 18-year-old boy speaking directly to the feeling of finding yourself grown up, overwhelmed, and disappointed — unsure if you've left it too late to redirect your life.

Carly Rae Jepsen, a woman in her early 30s who writes songs you could have used in high school, faces similar questions around identity and growing up that only resonate louder the older you get. On "Your Type", a song about realising the boy you like will never feel the same way, she tangles in a sub-narrative of facing who you really are.

Songs about love usually suggest you're special and something wonderful is waiting for you, but here she admits, "I'm not the type of girl for you? / And I'm not going to pretend / I'm the type of girl you call more than a friend". In a single line, she divorces herself from childish fantasy in favour of brutal self reflection. It's written from the perspective of a young woman letting go of a stubborn crush, but it mirrors an adult need to abandon unrealistic, unfulfilled romantic preoccupations

Even One Direction, who have done more to mirror the teenage psyche than any Sofia Coppola film, have something to offer a quarter life crisis. "You and I", off 2013's Midnight Memories, is classified as "Teen Pop" on Google Music. It's about being defiantly protective of a relationship as two people enter a new stage of life, and promise they won't make the same mistakes as others around them. Liam wonders, "Did they ever hold each other tight / Like us? Did they ever fight' like us?" Before Harry, who else, promises "You and I / We don't wanna be like them / We can make it 'til the end / Nothing can come between You and I."

I don't know what that song is actually about, but I don't know how any human could listen to it and not think of all the times they looked at their parent's relationship, frayed by time, and thought, that is not going to be me. It's a preoccupation that haunts you most when you live with them as a teen, and when you feel yourself becoming them as an adult. But more than anything, it's also a comfort, and reflects the continuous thread that sees so many of us gravitate towards pop as we get older.

Pop is after all, almost unfalteringly, optimistic. It promises that things are going to be okay, but also requires the listener to possess an extraordinary level of emotional openness to be able to hear these loaded, saccharine words and not roll their eyes. It's easy to do as a kid, when you want to be reassured that the adult world will be exciting enough to make up for the confusion you feel. But it's also an incredible comfort when you find yourself in the middle of that turmoil years later, and just want to be reminded that literally everyone on earth feels like you do sometimes. When you're younger, you're looking for things to define yourself against, things to hate or criticise to show the power of your own tastes. But as you get older, you look for connection and meaning — the two things pop never falters on.

Too bad no one ever pointed that out to me in high school, I might have been better served to ask other teenage girls what they were listening to.

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