Songfacts®:

• The title "Wasted Youth" derives from the quote "youth is wasted on the young." In this song, Fletcher (the singer-songwriter Cari Fletcher) turns the phrase by letter her special someone know that if she is going to waste her youth, she wants to waste it with them. The song embodies the spirit of living at full-throttle, experiencing everything life has to offer.
• Fletcher certainly didn't waste her youth. When she was just 17 she made a splash on the reality competition show The X Factor (the US version), and a few years later release her first single, "War Paint." "Wasted Youth" is part of her 2016 debut EP, Finding Fletcher, released independently when she was 22. The song didn't get much attention at the time but did in ensuing years after Fletcher signed a record deal and built a fanbase with songs like "Undrunk" and "Becky's So Hot."
• Ryan Hutchins directed the music video, which shows Fletcher canoodling with Shannon Beveridge on Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles. The song isn't about Beveridge - it was written before they met - but the sentiment applied. At the time, Fletcher and Beveridge were just getting to know each other, and sparks were flying. Fletcher was visiting Beveridge from New York when they had some drinks and went to the beach. Hutchins pulled out his camera and started recording, and when Fletcher saw the footage she agreed that it could form the basis for the song's music video.
  
  By this point, Beveridge had a substantial following on social media, and the video confirmed to internet that she and Fletcher were dating.
  
  "That video is so real. Us just fully obsessed with each other," Fletcher said.
  
  After the video was released, Fletcher and Beveridge kept dating but kept it quiet, playing coy about their relationship and presenting as friends on their socials. Over the next few years, Fletcher released a lot of songs that dealt with their ups and downs, but didn't acknowledge Beveridge as the inspiration until 2020, when she released an EP called The S(ex) Tapes, written and recorded when they had broken up but were quarantined together (it's complicated!). Beveridge directed the videos to accompany those songs.
• The music video for "Wasted Youth" was a coming out for Fletcher. "It was my first time sharing anything about my sexuality, being queer," she said on Shannon Beveridge's Exes And O's podcast. "It was really scary. It was in 2016. I had come out to my family but not publicly. It was the most beautiful time of my life, also. Getting to share that piece of me felt like so much freedom."
  
  "There wasn't that much representation, especially in pop music," she added. "I realized, if I share this, it's a statement I'm making about myself. There was a ton of fear around it. Am I going to alienate certain people? Am I going to be pigeonholed? But it was the foundational platform that I was able to free myself in and share that with other people. Before that I was being vague, like, 'I'm singing about love!'"
• Fletcher wrote the song with Jamie Kenney and Paula Winger. Kenney, who also co-wrote her debut single, "War Paint," produced the track.
• Wasted Youth is also the name of an '80s punk band and a 2011 movie.