1 As youths look for sources of information, emotional understanding, and cues for the expression of their emerging social and personal identity, they often find music to provide them with valuable meanings (Zillman and Gan, 1987).
2 In this paper we explore the characteristics of teen pop lyrics and their significance at the personal and socio-cultural level.
3 In our analysis we included all the artists featured on the Disney Channel Network (hereafter, DCN) during the third week of December 2000 in order to draw a broad sample of contemporary teen pop performers. We chose the DCN because it is one of only two TV cable channels whose programming is dedicated exclusively to pre-adolescents and adolescents.
4 Whereas the label ‘rock’ has often been used as an umbrella term to catch just about any genre other than classical, one particular style that has been largely ignored by academic observers is teen pop. The influence of teen pop in pre-adolescent and adolescent culture can no longer be ignored given its increasingly dominant role in music sales, TV and radio airplay, the proliferation of popular female performers and all-boy bands, and the integration of individual teen pop stars into advertising campaigns by Fortune 500 corporations (e.g., Burger King, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Inc.).