50 Best Rock Songs About High School Sweethearts

Rock Tracks That Hit Like Old High School Love

There’s a kind of ache that follows people who knew each other before anything got complicated. High school sweethearts carry that strange familiarity where every memory smells faintly like a cheap perfume or the inside of a car after football games. You grow up next to each other, and suddenly one day you don’t. The right song can knock you straight back to those blurry afternoons when love felt huge but fragile, stitched together by curfews and mixtapes that probably sounded terrible on purpose. Some of these tracks spell it out, others circle the feeling and let it sting in small doses.

Rock songs tend to linger on that kind of history. They get it—the nostalgia that’s warm one second and unbearable the next. The guitars always seem a little too loud, like they’re trying to fill in for something that got left behind. A few of these might not be literally centered on teenage love, but they hum with the same pulse. It’s the sound of young hearts trying to hold on before time does what time always does. You can hear it in every chord that bends too long, every lyric that sounds like it was written years later but meant for someone still sixteen.

Some stories fade and some echo louder with age, and the best ones tend to leave a mark that never quite closes. These tracks pick through those leftovers, the soft edges of what felt like forever at seventeen. They mix in pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that all somehow catch that same heartbeat. Not every track tells the story straight, but each one fits the theme in its own crooked way. Here are the best rock songs about high school sweethearts.

1. 'High School Confidential' by Rough Trade

2. 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus

3. 'Summer Nights' by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John

4. 'Jack & Diane' by John Mellencamp

5. 'My Sharona' by The Knack

6. 'The Boys of Summer' by Don Henley

7. 'Just What I Needed' by The Cars

8. 'I Want You to Want Me' by Cheap Trick

9. 'First Day of My Life' by Bright Eyes

10. 'Someday' by The Strokes

11. 'Cherry Bomb' by The Runaways

12. 'Only Exception' by Paramore

13. 'I Wanna Be Sedated' by Ramones

14. 'Seventeen' by Winger

15. 'Forever Young' by Alphaville

16. 'Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy' by Queen

17. 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' by Queen

18. 'Here Without You' by 3 Doors Down

19. 'Wild Thing' by The Troggs

20. 'I Will Possess Your Heart' by Death Cab for Cutie

21. 'God Only Knows' by The Beach Boys

22. 'Be My Wife' by David Bowie

23. 'I Walk the Line' by Johnny Cash

24. 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' by Poison

25. 'Never Tear Us Apart' by INXS

26. 'Can't Fight This Feeling' by REO Speedwagon

27. 'Dancing in the Dark' by Bruce Springsteen

28. 'Brown Eyed Girl' by Van Morrison

29. 'Iris' by The Goo Goo Dolls

30. 'Faithfully' by Journey

31. 'Love Shack' by The B-52's

32. 'Sweet Child O' Mine' by Guns N' Roses

33. 'Wild Horses' by The Rolling Stones

34. 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' by Aerosmith

35. 'Thank You' by Led Zeppelin

36. 'Love Song' by The Cure

37. 'Lovesong' by The Cure

38. 'Everlong' by Foo Fighters

39. 'Just Like Heaven' by The Cure

40. 'Dream On' by Aerosmith

41. 'Use Somebody' by Kings of Leon

42. 'The Ballad of Angel' by Bobby Swanson

43. 'She's a Rainbow' by The Rolling Stones

44. 'Melissa' by Allman Brothers Band

45. 'Only Love' by Ben Howard

46. 'Something' by The Beatles

47. 'In My Life' by The Beatles

48. 'The Man with the Child in His Eyes' by Kate Bush

49. 'Riptide' by Vance Joy

50. 'Can't Stop Loving You' by Van Halen