5 Songs TCKs Relate To

I’ve been listening to a lot of music from my teens (don’t ask why, I wish I knew) and realising a lot of it had a different meaning to me as a Third Culture Kid than it did to other listeners. In the process of clearing out my MP3 Player (I know, I’m old, I hate it) I found a few tunes that your inner fifteen year old TCK will bang their head to.

1. Inside the Outsider, Marina and the Diamonds

These people are really weird
And they’re giving me the fear
Just because you know my name
Doesn’t mean you know my game
I look myself in the face
And whisper I’m in the wrong place
Is there more to lose than gain
If I go on my own again, on my own again

This one is more widely relatable- who hasn’t felt like a misfit before? But it’s on a different level for TCKs. Everywhere you go is a new place with a different set of rules and customs to adjust to and learn so it looks like you know what you’re doing. Even when you return home (‘repatriate’), it’s to a country you’ve never lived in and you probably don’t know the first thing about the culture there.

Often, the way we look doesn’t ‘match’ the countries we’ve lived in (see the white TCK who grew up in Africa and repatriated to the U.S. in adulthood). No matter where you go, you’re missing somewhere. I grew up largely in Panama, but while I was there I missed Ecuador. While I was in Ecuador I missed the Caribbean, while I was in the Caribbean I missed Florida. It’s an unforgiving cycle. Sometimes your gut reaction to the constant movement is to go off on your own, rather than try to assimilate for the nth time. (Healthy, right?)

2. Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver

This one is probably the most universal of TCK anthems. We’ve all left people in our home countries we care about, who we hope won’t forget us and who we hope will keep in touch… but when you know how big the world is, it’s impossible to stay in one place. It’s worth the risk of loosing people- you gotta keep travelling!

3. Born for This, The Score

We are the warriors, who learned to love the pain
We come from different places but have the same name
‘Cause we were born for this
We were born for this
We are the broken ones, who chose to spark a flame
Watch as our fire rages, our hearts are never tame
‘Cause we were, born for this
We were born for this

Okay, this song is a guilty pleasure. It’s too damn catchy. For me, it captures the feeling of finding a community of other TCKs– we’re all from different places, and in a way that makes us the same. We understand each others struggles on a RIDICULOUS level.

We’re also great at elevating each others skills and choosing to overlook all the struggle because in the end, we’re born to be TCKs, and that’s pretty great sometimes. We travel to different places but we find each other and pieces of ourselves everywhere we go.

4. Jet Lag, Simple Plan (Ft Natasha Bedingfield)

You say good morning
When it’s midnight
Going out of my head
Alone in this bed
I wake up to your sunset
And it’s drivin’ me mad
I miss you so bad
And my heart is so jet-lagged
Heart is so jet-lagged
So jet lagged
I miss you so bad
I wanna share your horizon
And see the same sun risin’
I miss you so bad
And turn the hour hand back to when you were holding me

Ugh, I’ve lost track of the number of times overly emotional emo me played this song and thought of people left behind in other countries. Why yes, my heart is jet-lagged. So is the rest of me. All the time. In order to avoid working out time zones, my friends and I would say things like ‘Good Mornight’ and ‘How’s your aftermorning?’ and it took so much stress off of our young brains.

The song is extra sweet for TCKs because there are four different versions. Simple Plan sings English in each version, but guest vocals are sung in French by Marie-Mai, in Chinese by Kelly Cha, alongside an Indonesian version with Kotak lead vocalist Tantri Syalindri and of course one in English by Natasha Bedingfield. We can get a special enjoyment out of each version, knowing it’s a love song pretty much written for us.

5. Good Life, OneRepublic