Angst

Angst is a German, Dutch and North Germanic word for fear or anxiety. It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of internal emotional strife.

A different but related meaning is attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Kierkegaard used the word angst (Danish, meaning "dread") to describe a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair in the free human being. Where the animal is a slave to its God-given instincts but always confident in its own actions, Kierkegaard believed that the freedom given to mankind leaves the human in a constant fear of failing its responsibilities to God. Kierkegaard's concept of angst is considered to be an important stepping stone for 20th-century existentialism.

While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst is broadened to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God). Still, the angst in alternative music may be more accessible to most audiences than the esoteric tradition of existentialism. The term "angst" is now widely used with a negative and derisive connotation that mocks the expression of a common adolescent experience of malaise.

Angst in contemporary music
Angst, in contemporary connotative use, most often describes the intense frustration and other related emotions of teenagers and the mood of the music with which they identify. Punk rock, grunge, emo, and virtually any Alternative Rock dramatically combining elements of discord, melancholy and excitement may be said to assert angst. There is an obvious connection to this music and the various subjugation of its proponent youth or racial or sociopolitical minority subculture.

Angst was probably first discussed in relation to contemporary music in the mid to late 1980s and 1990s. In the 1980s "teen angst" was expressed in music to a certain extent in the rise of "punk", but the word "angst" is currently more associated with, and was probably first used in reference to, the grunge movement and the band Nirvana. Nirvana themselves seem to have been aware of this, as evidenced by the first line of Serve the Servants in which Kurt Cobain describes the success of writing songs dealing with the subject (Teenage angst has paid off well | Now I'm bored and old...).