‘That Moment in the Basement’: An Oral History of Broken Social Scene’s ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl’

This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2003 Week continues here as we invite the creators behind one of the year’s most iconic indie rock songs — and one of our favorite ’03 deep cuts — Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” to tell the story behind its humble beginnings and unlikely growth to true anthem status.

Park that car. Drop that phone. Sleep on the floor. Dream about me. 

You’re probably familiar with those words in one way or another. Maybe you’ve heard them in a movie. Maybe you’ve bawled your eyes out to them. Maybe you’ve seen them in a meme. Maybe you have them tattooed on your body. Regardless of how trivial or meaningful the encounter was, if you’ve heard or seen them once over the past 20 years, chances are pretty good that they’ve stuck with you until now. 

Those lyrics are repeated 13 times in a row to form the climax of “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” one of many classic tracks that make up Broken Social Scene’s breakout second album, You Forgot It in People. Originally released in the band’s native Canada in 2002 and more widely reissued in 2003, the album announced the arrival of an unbelievably eclectic, stacked collective, the likes of which would dominate Toronto’s indie music scene for years to come. 

At various moments on You Forgot It in People and BSS’ self-titled 2005 follow-up, you can hear members of Metric, Feist, Stars, Do Make Say Think, and Apostle of Hustle, to name just a sliver of the band’s overall constellation. “Anthems” itself features Metric’s Emily Haines and James Shaw, as well as the prolific Montreal-based violinist Jessica Moss, who’s played with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arcade Fire, A Silver Mt. Zion, and many others.

Fading in after the playful, wide-eyed “Pacific Theme,” the song kind of comes out of nowhere after You Forgot It in People’s rollicking first half. It’s an impressionist version of a tearful ballad, with wisps of banjo, guitar, tom-toms and vocals gradually locking step into a structure-averse buildup that peaks and then immediately dissolves into ghostly reverberations. The only entirely female-sung track on the album, “Anthems” is also a star-making turn for Haines, whose lyrics are cut-and-paste snapshots that exude fraught nostalgia, the likes of which would be snuffed out by extraneous words. It’s impossible to catch the song with your bare hands, but also impossible to walk away unmoved. 

“Anthems” has spent the past two decades flitting between temporary and unlikely homes to form its lasting legacy. From hormonally charged AIM away messages to irreverent memes, from the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World soundtrack to a Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman guest appearance at a BSS show, from a cover by gothic indie-folk singer-songwriter Nicole Dollanganger to an interpolation by rapper/comedian Open Mike Eagle, this song means many different things to many different people. Somehow, a humble tune wafted out of a Toronto basement and into the lives of many. These days, Haines views “Anthems” as “A song that’s definitely achieved that thing that we all want a song to do – which is [to] outlive us all and welcome everybody in its own way with a life of its own.” 

The song’s not the only enduring classic from the album — ”Lover’s Spit” in particular has been licensed for a litany of film and TV syncs, and also got some visibility from a name-drop in Lorde’s “Ribs.” But “Anthems” has a separate legacy that feels almost divorced from the group of artists that made it. In some ways – namely, its folky, twee melodrama – it is distinctively 2003. In others, it feels mysteriously timeless: it is specific but universal, comforting but opaque. Here is its story, as told by those artists, as well as a few key others. 

In 2002, the original Broken Social Scene core of Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning were recruiting members for their second album. Their 2001 debut, Feel Good Lost, was a mostly instrumental affair, but they had a more adventurous, collaborative process in mind for this new material. 

Brendan Canning (BSS Co-Founder, Bass on “Anthems”): Talented as Kevin and I may think we are, it’s great to have other people on base when you’re a band. 

Kevin Drew (BSS Co-Founder, Keys and “Backwards Guitar” on “Anthems”): At that time, it was all about impressing each other and trying to keep up with whatever was happening in the room. I feel as if there was a freedom, but also an urgency. It was the wildest ride, just trying to have this completely different sonic perspective in the songs we were doing, and a completely different approach as well.

Canning: It’s not like there was any fake, “Okay guys, we’ve gotta make a pop song,” [direction]. It’s not an awkward conversation about band direction, everyone is able to communicate without having to talk about it. Everyone who plays in Broken Social Scene, past or present, has always communicated musically, and that’s why it worked. It’s not, ‘Okay everybody, The Strokes are really popular, so we gotta keep up with those guys.’

Charles Spearin (Vocal Effects on “Anthems”): There was some butting of heads in the studio, but most of us were just excited. I think the fact that the majority of us had other projects on the go meant we weren’t wholly invested with our egos in the project. There was a sense of just adding to the stew without getting too anxious about it, and that was really helpful. Kevin was really good at making people feel welcome and admired—it was almost like bringing somebody in was this admiration, just the sense like, “We really love what you do, can you come in and add to this mess that we’re making?”

John Crossingham (Banjo on “Anthems”): I initially joined as a drummer, but I really got a sense very quickly that it was very, very loose in terms of roles within the band. I was definitely intimidated. I was keenly aware of the fact that there were a lot of really good players in there. Justin Peroff was a much better drummer [than me], Andrew Whiteman and Charles Spearin were much better guitar players. I was like, ‘Okay, this is my chance to show my stuff and push myself to do better.’

Rehearsals began in Drew’s basement. On the day of “Anthems”’ conception, a typically eclectic group had assembled.

Canning: Myself, Justin Peroff, John Crossingham, Jimmy Shaw, Emily Haynes, and Jason Collette were in the basement. Kevin was upstairs while we were playing, and he came downstairs at one point and was like, “You guys sound like a bar band.” I was like, [disconcertedly] “All right.” 

Drew: Yeah, I said, “It sounds like a bar band.” I’m sure that’s it. When Brendan tells the story, I always chuckle. Like, I was not there for the [actual creation of the] song. 

Canning: We weren’t playing “Anthems” or anything [yet], that was more like the impetus to change what we were doing and play something different, just a subtle directorial direction. So I came up with a bassline and then everyone started playing it. Like, all of a sudden we have an idea that hopefully wasn’t like a bar band. 

Emily Haines (Vocals on “Anthems”): I remember Canning just playing [imitates his delicately descending bassline] on the bass, and Jimmy came in with a riff, and I just went [sings] ‘Used to be one…’ 

Canning: I whispered a vocal motif to Emily. I whispered in her ear, something like, “Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that,” but maybe I didn’t have all those lyrics, and then she just took that and ran with it.

Drew: I remember coming back downstairs later and hearing what they were working on and thinking, ‘Okay, here we go. This is cool.’ 

Haines’ “Anthems” lyrics have become a frequent subject of interpretation, even within the band. 

Canning: She took a few days, added some lyrics, next thing you know, you got the “bleaching your teeth, smiling flash, talking trash’ part. 

Haines: The time that I wrote “Anthems” was one of the moments when Metric came back to Toronto from New York, a little hiatus. I remember walking around in the smallest leather jacket possible when it started getting cold—I remember actually writing [Metric’s] “IOU” the same way, just walking around. I guess when you’re so broke you can’t really go inside anywhere. So it was just like, “Uh, I guess I’ll walk around”’ I had been working on this melody and this idea of like, that pain of having to let go when you’re growing up and you’re moving on from being someone that you were. 

Drew: [Emily] is one of my favorite lyricists. I found the simplicity of “Anthems” so haunting, lyric-wise, and that’s the power of Emily. The selection of her words was just perfect.

Haines: [It was] this tale of a lost kid, or someone who was about to go off to LA, maybe. I was definitely aware of the fact that something was ending. If you’re gonna be a super stubborn independent person like myself and want to change the industry at the same time as you’re trying to launch your band, you’re gonna have a bit of an uphill grind. So it’s not a sad thing, it was just the sense of “Oh man yeah, things are gonna change.”

Crossingham: It taps into that mysterious quality of being young and at odds with things. It’s opaque enough that you can put anything you want on it, but it’s specific enough in its emotion that you recognize what’s being intimated.

Haines: It’s funny because the idea of selling out or the idea of integrity was such a theme at the time, and now it’s not – I feel like you’d be hard pressed to even explain the concept to people. But there was definitely an element of that – “Bleaching your teeth, smiling, flash, talking trash under your breath.” Like the idea of, obviously there’s a depiction of someone that you don’t wanna be, and maybe that person already exists, or maybe that’s what not to become, but it’s such a throughline of the music from that time that I made. 

Ryan Schreiber (Pitchfork founder and You Forgot It in People reviewer): [You Forgot It in People] is very much a coming-of-age record; almost all of its songs grapple with some degree of personal turmoil and self-discovery through tribulation. “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” is almost the centerpiece in that way; it’s the clearest distillation of the album’s broader theme – how growing up forces us to shed youthful ideals and pieces of our identity that once felt like they defined us in whole, and how, with enough remove, it can start to feel like that person you used to be no longer even exists.

Drew: There was a warm welcoming into what we all were trying to think about, which was, it’s okay to be lost, it’s okay to be an individual, it’s okay to get through all the angst that you’re coming out of as you become an adult – but still having so much baggage of youth and so much trauma of youth and so much joy of youth. I think it was the youth of that feeling that ended up being why I titled it the way that I did.

Haines: Kevin, who has such a gift for song titles – he named it “Anthems for Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” Which just made sense.

Drew: I felt that we were anthem makers, and not in a bombastic way, but in a way that music is there to take care of you. It’s there to make you not feel alone. It’s there to help describe how you’re feeling or to give you identity. When we were all together, in the basement. I felt like we were little anthem workers.

BSS recorded You Forgot It in People with local producer David Newfeld in his makeshift studio.

David Newfeld (Production on “Anthems”): For about three years, basically all I was doing was working on their stuff. “Anthems” was one of the first songs they did at my place.

Drew: [“Anthems”] was definitely one of the easier songs to do, and Newf took to it right away. He was already bringing us to a place that I had never been to before. It was such an education into sound, but not realizing that you were being educated. 

Newfeld: They were hearing it after it was laid down, and it was funny, they were like, “This is too normal.”

Spearin: Everybody thought it was a little bit too pretty or a little bit too sweet, or something like that. So I took the vocals and ran it through some guitar pedals, and that’s how we ended up getting that [pitch-shifted] sound, which I think was super cool.

Drew: One of the things that [Charlie and I] loved doing the most was affecting [Emily’s] vocals, messing around with her sound.

Newfeld: At that point, I would never have dared do something like that, ‘cause they’re just mangling the shit out of [the vocals]. I’m like, “Oh okay, I didn’t know you could take those liberties, cool.”’ They’re like “Yeah, we’ve gotta make this f–king weirder.”

Crossingham: I had some E-bow type guitar parts in mind for “Anthems,” but Jamie’s guitar was already so dreamy and Emily’s vocal had the pitch effects, so it didn’t feel quite right. I got in my head that maybe a banjo would be cool. I was flying blind a little bit, but I found an open tuning that was in the key of the song. I just sat there for 40 minutes and wrote a part and felt pretty good about it and said, “Okay, let’s give it a shot.” When you listen to it, it’s quite tentative. It sounds like someone who isn’t a super confident banjo player, but it really suits the vibe of the song.

Newfeld: The other thing I really remember about that tune was that they wanted to bring in Jessica Moss to come in and play violin on it. 

Jessica Moss (Violin on “Anthems”): Kevin was a friend at the time and I knew a few of the others, but it felt a bit like something weird and brave and unknown to do. I had really enjoyed [playing on Feel Good Lost], but I went back to Montreal and continued building my world here as Broken Social Scene was on the rise – and then in our world, Godspeed and Mount Zion were on the rise. It really felt like the difference between Montreal and Toronto was the difference between Godspeed and Social Scene. I don’t know anybody else actually who’s straddled both of them, lived in both worlds in the same way. 

Drew: Charlie and I loved working with Jessica Moss. When she walked into the room, my whole spirit would be intimidated. She has this incredible way of bringing sadness and comfort into melody with violin. I had worked with her on three records, and I knew this had way more of a pop sensibility and I was a little bit afraid of that. 

Moss: If you saw a description of Broken Social Scene written on paper and description of Godspeed written on paper, you would be like, “Yeah, that’s a similar kind of thing.” But I suppose at the time there were feelings of animosity and feelings of competition. In retrospect, like, what a load of bullshit, in some ways. In other parts, I still feel like our deeply held values are still my values. 

Drew: The violin line that she plays, she just did it off the cuff. You never had to give Jessica direction.

Newfeld: She came into the studio one afternoon and she basically went, ‘All right, just play me the song. Let me hear how loud the headphones are. Okay, a little too quiet. Okay, put my violin in. Nah, that’s fine. Okay, just play the song and let me do takes.’ She did a few passes like that, and that’s what you hear. It was pretty damn cool at that time, ‘cause I was also working with some people that were not super talented and were total a–holes.

Drew: I don’t believe there’s ever a time when we would be recording her that I wasn’t just completely captivated by her. I’ve never worked with somebody that had such an immediate melodic understanding of what you’re presenting them and brought so much identity. The identity was melancholy to me ‘cause it’s a violin, but there was an honesty that was very intimidating about her musicianship – which, of course, when you’re scared or you’re intimidated, it’s an amazing place to be in art. 

“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” is slotted as song seven of You Forgot It in People’s 13 tracks, smack-dab in the middle of the album. 

Schreiber: Clearly, a lot of thought was put into the sequencing, production, and pacing of the album, and that goes a long way towards holding it together musically. It manages to sound like the product of one band, despite how its core players criss-cross genres and styles and swap vocal leads. 

Crossingham: The thing that really works for “Anthems” for me is how — there’s examples of that all over the record — it’s a really excellent mixture of synthetic and organic instrumentation. It’s not a folk song, but it’s not quite a future-leaning indie ballad [either]. It’s got its own enigmatic character and every single piece of it coalesced in a pretty magic way. 

Spearin: [“Anthems”] has a pop sensibility. All the songs did in their own way, for a band somewhat intentionally trying to shy away from pop structure – verse chorus, bridge, chorus, that kind of thing. We found a way to write pop music that totally eschewed your standard format. And that was something that I felt we were proud of and was a highlight for us.

Canning: Why would you hem yourself in with starting to second guess whether these songs fit together? F–king, I don’t know, you ever listen to The Beatles? They seem to make a lot of different ideas work all together. But you know, what did they know? That’s more of a modern curse.

After discovering the CD within the “boxes upon boxes of promos” he received at the Pitchfork mailbox, Schreiber awarded You Forgot It in People a 9.2 score in his glowing review on February 2, 2003. 

Newfeld: At the time, Brendan and I were like, “Yeah, this track’s okay, but we’re really intrigued with some of the other ones we were working on”’ Whereas Charlie’s like “No, a lot of people are gonna like this.” I remember he felt strongly about that track. And then when it came out, there was the Pitchfork review, and it’s like, “I’m listening to the album, and then I get to track seven, and then there’s that song!”’ I’m like, “Holy shit, Charlie was right, a lot of people are gonna really dig this.”

Schreiber: You Forgot It in People was really the first record that indicated I was on the right track with that strategy [of digging through promos]. It’s an album I would never have discovered any other way. I remember doing a double-take about three or four tracks in, because there was absolutely nothing about the packaging, the band name, the label, or anything else that would have indicated what was encoded on that disc. I was completely floored by it on first listen, and that inspired me to keep digging through the rest of the stacks for other albums that might be flying under my radar. That process ultimately led to discoveries of music by Sufjan Stevens, M83, The Books, The Unicorns, and others.

Canning: With this album, we really established ourselves in such a significant way. It gave us all really good careers in music. 

Newfeld: They went from just an indie band in Toronto to suddenly a worldwide sensation, which definitely created a huge impression in Toronto itself. It was a real dynamic change. Before that, Canadians always looked at other parts of the world, like England or the United States, like that’s where the really happening stuff was, and us in Canada, we’re just observers in a backwater. I don’t wanna diss the scene too much, but I feel that when we got this project going and the album came out, it really sent the message that we can do our own thing and interpret popular music and come up with our own angle on it that’s valid in any country.

Haines: I remember how I felt at that time, before [Shaw and I] moved to LA. It was really early days and everyone was struggling, but also there was so much determination – certainly from me and Jimmy, where we were like, “Oh, we’re gonna do this.” We felt like we had to leave, and [BSS] felt like they could stay to achieve what they wanted to achieve. It’s totally different now in Canada, but in the late ‘90s, early 2000s, it really didn’t seem conceivable that you would be able to become an international entity without leaving Canada. But I’m so happy that now people realize they maybe don’t have to, things have changed enough.

Over the past 20 years, “Anthems” has remained a staple of BSS shows. As Haines has only sporadically toured with the group over the years, lead vocals have been handled by a rotating cast of members. Most of the time, Drew plays Moss’ violin part on a keyboard.

Drew: It’s humbling to have one of your most successful songs be one you didn’t write. That song just became such a warm duvet for so many that I’ve just spent the next 20 years trying to constantly honor it live every night. I love it and I love playing it every night – it’s a signature piece that must be played. We don’t have many must-be-played [songs] but we know that “Anthems” is such a comforting song for people who come out to the shows that it’s on the set every night. 

Haines: I haven’t toured with [BSS] in forever, but whenever I do, “Anthems” is the peak of the set. There was one pretty intense instance where I was with Social Scene in 2017 in Europe. 

Drew: We were in Manchester the day after the bombing at the Ariana Grande show. [Smiths guitarist] Johnny Marr was gonna come and play with us that night, but then he canceled because of everything that was going on. 

Haines: I remember it was such a weird dilemma for [Kevin] because it was like, do you play the show or don’t you play the show?

Drew: I sent [Marr] a message saying, ‘Look, this is the song we’re gonna do now. We’re gonna open with this tune, and if you find it in your heart, come out.’ He called and said, ‘I’m coming.’ That was an iconic moment within the band, just due to the circumstances and the loss and the city, we were there when they were coming together. We weren’t sure what was going on. There was talk of martial law happening and all these things. And there we were, these Canadians who had this song, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” and we had James and Emily with us. We had the original writers in the room and it gave me shivers.

Haines: To just be saying those words, that it was this loss of life of all these literal 17-year-old girls, was just the strangest end of metaphor. The song seems to have many lives. 

Drew: This song just constantly keeps giving back to us. It keeps giving us moments where it breaks down that barrier, it makes a connection to everyone. It’s the power of the tune.

Whether in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World or a Spongebob meme, “Anthems” seems to consistently pop up where you’d least expect it. 

Canning: There would be no “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” memes without Emily’s lyrics. That’s kind of meaningless, but at the same time, they’re lyrics that stuck around and still apply to this day. She was ahead of the curve with that, the conversation, “Oh, people are on their phones too much.’ That wasn’t really a thing.” I didn’t have a cell phone in 2002.

Crossingham: I literally just finished signing not one, but two different release forms for the use of that song in a TV show or film or whatever. It’s funny too, I posted something on my Instagram about how I was gonna finally play this banjo on stage for the 20th anniversary shows that we did in Toronto. And this friend of mine was like, “I had no idea you played on that song and that you played the banjo. Like, you’re a freaking legend. What the hell?”

Moss: I’d been talking to a few younger friends who had no idea that’s my violin on that song like, “What? I f–king love that song! I lived with that song on repeat when I was a teenager.” I just went to YouTube just to listen to it and as I was listening, I was scrolling through the comments and – oh my god, have you done that? There’s comments from 10 years ago and two months ago, like, “I’m 17 now” or “I was 20 when this happened and my mom died.” And actually if you keep reading down, it’s so sweet — ‘cause every once in a while someone says, “This has gotta be the sweetest place on the internet.” I think that’s so lovely. 

Haines: It’s funny, you never really know what song it’s going to be, right? I don’t really compare it to anything in Metric. I just feel like “Anthems” is its own very cool universe, because it’s so well suited – given the nature of Social Scene and the rotating live performers – it’s just so suited to the Meryl Streeps of the world coming in for a cameo.

Drew: [Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman’s guest performance] was two best friends having a really fun evening. It was an unscripted moment that we, as a band, spoke afterwards and said “What that was, stays what that was.” It was such a joyful moment that they shared with us, just two besties.

Canning: You just get lucky, right? You get lucky with a song and it continues to have a different life of its own and outside of the album. On any album, there’s gonna be one song, [even] To Pimp a Butterfly—in another 10 years from now, what are gonna be the big songs that are gonna be remembered from that record? Or what about like, SZA’s last record? You can only be very grateful for the fact that your songs are still being considered and talked about in the conversation of popular music.

Crossingham: It’s an example of how, if you’re allowed to have that moment to be creative, you don’t know what effect a couple hours’ worth of work is gonna have. If you’re a musician, you do that kind of thing hundreds of times over in many different situations, but that one particular, the way everything fell together turned out beautifully. It’s one of the least-planned out and least fretted over and least massaged into form things I’ve ever done, which does really say something, right?

Drew: There’s been magical moments of all different kinds of people singing it and different moments of when we played it. I’m indebted to that moment in the basement where they all came up with something that in the end has been nothing but an honor to play.