Jenny Owen Youngs – “Teenage Dream” (Katy Perry Cover)
I’m a big fan of Jenny Owen Youngs from back in the day — her debut Batten The Hatches and its follow-up Transmitter Failure were in heavy rotation for me during my high school years and are both great — and she’s still putting out music (and hosting a popular Buffy podcast).
For the last couple Bandcamp Fridays, she’s put out new songs, and she’s gearing up to release an extended edition of her Night Shift EP from last year. Included on that extended edition is a cover of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” the title track from Perry’s sophomore album, which recently turned 10. Youngs, who knows her way around a cover, turns it into a spectral ode to young love.
“I wanted to cover ‘Teenage Dream’ because it’s one of my favorite ‘modern classic’ love songs,” Youngs said in a statement. “It captures that pure essence of the beginning of new love: the simultaneous pull of longing paired with the euphoric realization that This Is Happening. You’ve got your hands up at the top of the first big roller coaster drop and you’ve only just started to fall.”
Check it out below.
And here are those newer songs from Youngs:
The extended edition of the Night Shift EP is out 10/2. It also includes remixes from Ra Ra Riot and The One AM Radio, the project of Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway