The song's inspiration stems from a trip when the band was on their way to record forSatellite on March 5, 2001. They were held up in traffic and discovered that the reason wasa mass shooting atSantana High School, where a fifteen-year-old student named Charles Andrew Williams killed two and wounded thirteen. The album was consequently delayed, and the band was inspired to write "Youth of the Nation."
In a 2008 interview, guitaristMarcos Curiel described the event:
"We were rehearsing and writingSatellite a couple of blocks away from the school. One day on the way to the studio, there were all these helicopters and cars speeding by. We really didn't know what was going on. When we got to the studio, this guy had the news on, and he was like, 'This kid just went and started blasting fools.' So we started jamming, and that rhythm just naturally came out, thenWuv [Bernardo, drummer] put that drumbeat on it, and the song was born."
Curiel added, "When you can hear something that's going to uplift you like 'Alive' or something that's going to bring out knowledge like 'Youth of the Nation,' we've done our jobs as an artist."[6]
"Youth of the Nation" contains three stories of adolescent tragedy in American culture. It begins by describing a teenager skating to school only to be shot by a fellow student. Lyrics go on to speculate whether or not the boy who committed the act felt unloved. Following the chorus, a 12-year-old girl called "little Suzie" is depicted as having been abandoned by her father and subsequently "finding love in all the wrong places." Finally, another teen known as "Johnny boy" fails to fit in with his peers and ultimately commits suicide by firearm, "[telling] the world how he felt with the sound of a gat [handgun]."[1]
The music video for "Youth of the Nation" has the band performing the song in a room filled with photos of adolescents as seen on the single cover. It revolves around a group of teenagers taking a cross country trip in a car fromNew York City toVenice Beach inLos Angeles viaWestern Pennsylvania (New Kensington, Arnold, Cheswick, Harmarville),Carhenge is used as a backdrop for parts of the chorus along with other locales. The bookOn the Road byJack Kerouac can be seen on the dashboard of the car. Directed byPaul Fedor, the video found significant airplay onMTV2.
The video features a prefamousJoel David Moore as the teenager driving the car.[7]
Marcos Curiel noted that censorship of the video came into play due toViacom: "We had a girl sitting on the hood of the car going down the highway trying to be free-spirited, you know? [...] But, Viacom and MTV had us edit that out because kids are so easily influenced."[6]
