my single is dropping

Close Out Pride With Peach PRC’s Cover of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’

Photo: YouTube

As if to say “Bye, gay!” Spotify has released a cover of Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag” by Peach PRC, with a little over a day of Pride Month left to go. And this time, the dirtbag in question is a girl. Australian pop girlie/TikTok sensation Peach PRC changes no pronouns in the song and keeps the line about the boyfriend bringing a gun to school. This intrinsically ups the political quotient of the song for 2022, when guns seem to have more rights than gays in schools. The song is paired with a series of mixes for Peach PRC’s single “God Is a Freak,” which has become a handy piece of rhetorical art at protests.

This is not the first cover of “Teenage Dirtbag” to merit some journalistic inquiry. Phoebe Bridgers did a version. Wheatus rerecorded the song themselves, Taylor Swift style, after losing control of their masters. Peach PRC’s version is a spiritual sister to that other millennial cover of the summer, Muna’s version of “Sometimes” by Britney Spears for Fire Island.

Close Out Pride With Peach PRC’s Cover of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’