“Teen Idle,” off of MARINA’s album, “Electra House,” is a song about her regrets about wanting to forego her teenage years.

Her raw honesty is shown right off the bat in the first verse when she says, “I wish I’d been, a teen, teen idle.” She regrets not being a rebellious teen like everyone else and “idolizes” the people who did.

The first verse talks about how she feels like she was robbed of her teenage years because she was trying to be perfect. The first line of the song says, “I wanna be a bottle blonde” meaning it was the popular thing to be very skinny and be blonde. That was the perception of perfection. The first verse then continues to talk about how she feels like she was robbed of her ideal teenage girl dreams. “I wanna be an idle teen, I wish I hadn’t been so clean” which is talking about how she regrets sticking to her values and missing out on having fun. She says how she wants to go back in time and waste her life as a teenager and make mistakes. “I want blood, guts, and chocolate cake” refers to the craving for drama and carnage but also wanting the good with it.

The chorus is about how she wishes she had been a teen idol and not wasted her time trying to grow up. “The wasted years, the wasted youth” refers to how she wasted her teenage years drinking and how she wanted to be the stereotypical party teen. The chorus finishes off by saying, “and the day has come where I have died, only to find I’ve come alive,” which admits that she has matured and grown out of her dangerous thoughts. And now that she is a successful pop star, she can be what her teenage self idolized.

The first line to the bridge is “I wish I wasn’t such a narcissist, I wish I didn’t kiss the mirror when I’m on my own.” Being a narc is when you are overly selfish and only care about yourself but particularly about your own appearance. The kissing the mirror part is about how she loves herself but not in a good way, in what she considers a narcissistic way. “Adolescence didn’t make sense, a little loss of innocence.” Marina went into adolescence not knowing what to do and how to enjoy it. The loss of innocence part talks about how she was growing up and learning to get older instead of being childish forever. “The ugly years of being a fool.” This refers to how she was supposed to be happy and go out and do dumb things while making a fool of herself. The end of the bride is about how she realizes that being an idle teen is not the life she wanted.

The outro is her realization that she doesn’t care about her youth anymore and that she’s looking to the future now. She might still regret it but it doesn’t matter anymore because that is in the past. There is nothing that she can do to change it so what is the point of whining and complaining about it?

Check out the lyrics to this amazing song: