麻豆社

The music writer Laura Barton presents a triptych of meditations on the enduring qualities, appeal and intent of pop music.

At the age of seventeen we stand on the cusp of adulthood, on the edge of new autonomy, freedom, beginning. It is the age, too that has preoccupied songwriters from Chuck Berry via the Beatles and Stevie Nicks to Olivia Rodrigo, who this year - at the age of seventeen - had a global hit with a song about getting that symbol of maturity, her driver's licence.

Laura talks to Janis Ian, herself on the edge of 70, and Sharon Van Etten, who's just turned 40, about the 'seventeen' songs they've written, as well as the music journalist David Hepworth, founding editor of Just Seventeen magazine, about what makes seventeen the pivotal age for pop music.

(Including extracts from Lost in Vegas with George and Ryan and Take 5 with Chit Chat on MAX TV)

Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl
Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen
Sharon Van Etten - Seventeen
Joan Jett - I Love Rock n Roll
Olivia Rodrigo - Drivers License
Jackie DeShannon - When You Walk in the Room
The Beatles - I Saw Her Standing There
Janis Ian - At Seventeen
Chuck Berry - Little Queenie
Meat Loaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Light
The Cars - Let's Go
Abba - Dancing Queen
Ladytron - Seventeen
The Regents - Seventeen
The Flamingos - Only Seventeen
Ray Coniff - Seventeen
Fontane Sisters - Seventeen
The Supremes - He's Seventeen
The Crystals - What a Nice Way to Turn Seventeen
St Etienne - When I was Seventeen
Frank Sinatra - It Was a Very Good Year
Elton John - Between Seventeen and Twenty
David Gates - Love is Always Seventeen
The Magic Numbers - Only Seventeen
Emilio - Seventeen

Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for 麻豆社 Radio 4

(Photograph of Sharon Van Etten, credit Laura Crosta)