Music has the ability to bring out a broad range of emotions. When an artist pours their heart out into a song, it's not only for their own catharsis, but it's a shared emotion with their fans, evoking a sense of nostalgia and longing. Artists create their music based on their own lives, whether that be songs about their relationships, songs about their hometowns, or the things they've gone through and the struggles they've had. Their fans, in turn, are able to relate to those experiences, and connect to the music on a deeper level.

There is really only one universal experience that every single person, artist and fan alike, can relate to, and that is growing up and getting older. It is a theme that transcends genre, with some of the greatest pop songs, classic rock songs, and even metal songs dealing with the idea of getting older. Songs about growing up may invoke different emotions in different people, at different stages of their lives, but no matter what phase of life you're in, these ten songs are sure to make you emotional about growing up.

10 Stop This Train

John Mayer

Guitar virtuoso John Mayer does some heavy emotional damage with this song. The lyrics are heavy and honest, with lines like, "So scared of getting older / I'm only good at being young," and the chorus, which states, "Stop this train / I wanna get off / and go home again." The train being a metaphor for life itself, Mayer explains that it's taking him further and further away from the home he was used to as a kid, the home he wants to go back to, but he is stuck on the train of life.

Guitar virtuoso John Mayer does some heavy emotional damage with this song.

As if that weren't enough, Mayer twists the knife with the second verse, leaving nothing to the imagination:

Don't know how else to say it

Don't wanna see my parents go

One generation's length away

From fighting life out on my own

The song itself is upbeat and fairly catchy, which, in some cases, can distract from a song's emotional subject matter, but not in the case of "Stop this Train." The lyrics are a straight-up gut punch, poignant for listeners of any age.

9 Never Grow Up

Taylor Swift

Most of Taylor Swift's biggest hits, at least from her earlier albums, were either love songs or breakup songs. They all contained multitudes of emotion, no doubt, but perhaps her hardest-hitting song of the Speak Now era was "Never Grow Up." Swift captures the duality between childhood and parenthood, and what it's like to move through life from both perspectives. The song begins from the very beginning, with the line, "Your little hands wrapped around my finger," and moves through the first verse, detailing the earliest stages of parenthood.

After the chorus, which is simply a heartfelt plea to the infant in the first verse to never grow up, the focus shifts, as the child is now a teenager. The second verse of this song is where I usually start tearing up, but by the time she reaches the bridge, that's when the dam bursts:

Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room

Memorize what it sounded like when your dad gets home

the footsteps, the words said

And all your little brother's favorite songs

I just realized everything I have is someday gonna be gone

Being that I was a teenager when this song blew up, I never used to understand why it would make my mom cry every time she heard it. Now, I absolutely understand.

8 Older Chests

Damien Rice

Damien Rice is an Irish musician who, ittedly, has not enjoyed the same level of success in the US as he has in the UK and Ireland. That said, "Older Chests" is a track from his debut album, O, which did reach the Billboard 200 in the US, peaking at number 114. The overarching theme of this song is the age of time, and how we, as individuals, may stay the same, but everyone and everything around us continues to change, whether we like it or not.

In the chorus, Rice sings, "Yeah you know, some things in life may change / And some things they stay the same / Like time, there's always time." The allusion that time is one of the only constants in life is certainly a gut punch, to say the least. Rice sings of the elderly, and how time has continued to move along, and the cities which once belonged to them have changed beyond their recognition. Yet he returns to the chorus, explaining that no matter how it may affect them, time will continue to go on.

7 Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town

Pearl Jam

One of Eddie Vedder's most impactful opening lines comes from a song whose very title evokes a sense of longing: "I seem to recognize your face / Haunting, familiar, yet I can't seem to place it." The notably long title is never mentioned in the lyrics, but its presence can be felt throughout the entire song. The whole three-minutes and 15-seconds have an overwhelming air of nostalgia surrounding its sound, specifically in the chorus, when Vedder's chillingly deep vocals coo, "Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away."

Telling the story of an elderly woman who is essentially stuck in a service job behind a counter in the town in which she has presumably lived her whole life, this song is timeless, a heartbreaking emotional trip. Every single line of this song is deeply raw, a testament to Vedder's talent as a lyricist that every line makes us simply feel, just as hard if not harder than the last.

6 Landslide

Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks' famously beautiful and heartbreaking ballad has been covered by a number of artists, most notably The Smashing Pumpkins and the Chicks. It is perhaps the quintessential song about growing up and growing old. Recognizing the serious nature of her life's circumstances, Nicks sings:

I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

'Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

In directing her questions to a 'mirror in the sky,' Nicks elevates the emotional severity of her words, with a helpless feeling of the unknown. Though we cannot all relate to her situation directly, her lyrics turn the feeling into something universal, something with which we can resonate.

In directing her questions to a 'mirror in the sky,' Nicks elevates the emotional severity of her words, with a helpless feeling of the unknown.

The song continues on to a widely known chorus that has brought tears to countless eyes across the globe: "But time makes you bolder / Even children get older / And I'm gettin' older, too." A pivotal track in Nicks' career, artists of all genres are still covering "Landslide," 50 years after its release.

5 Growin' Up

Bruce Springsteen

The Boss truly delivers on this piano-driven ballad about, unsurprisingly, growing up. The way Bruce Springsteen's vocals accompany the piano alone is enough to bring about a sense of nostalgia, but the emotion only gains complexity as the song goes on. He ends each chorus with the long, drawn-out line, "Ooh-ooh, growin' up," which causes a tinge of feeling in your chest every time he sings it.

Off of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., "Growin' Up" tells the story of Springsteen's youth, particularly the teenage years, when he was a bit of a troublemaker. The song follows what it means to be a kid, when everything simultaneously feels so unserious, yet like the weight of the world rests squarely upon your shoulders. The final verse ties the song together perfectly, a way of looking ahead:

Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth

But I got me a nice little place in the stars

And I swear I found the key to the universe

In the engine of an old parked car

Over five decades later, Springsteen's musical reckoning still resonates deeply with teenagers across the world, past, present, and surely future.

4 Castle On The Hill

Ed Sheeran

When this song came out, I was determinedly fixated on the line, "Me and my friends have not thrown up in so long, oh, how we've grown." I legitimately could not get past how out of place a lyric like that felt in a sentimental song about growing up. Once the song stopped playing on the radio, however, and I got a little bit older, I realized that this is just a lighthearted, inspiring anthem about what it feels like to be a kid with a dream.

Ed Sheeran sings about his life before fame, about growing up in a rural town, the experiences he had which shaped him into the man he is today, and what it feels like to return now that he is no longer a kid:

I found my heart and broke it here

Made friends and lost them through the years

And I've not seen the roaring fields in so long, I know I've grown

But I can't wait to go home

The stories in the lyrics vary from lighthearted anecdotes about drinking cheap spirits to getting your heart broken for the first time, but that is what makes this song so special. Touching on the spectrum of different experiences that shape us, Sheeran really hit close to home with this one.

3 The World I Know

Collective Soul

A song about the struggle to find meaning in life, Ed Roland's subtle vocals are a comfort to all who listen. The lyrics are tragic, as, in the music video, they depict a businessman who has become dissatisfied with his life. Roland sings, "I drink myself of new-found pity / Sitting alone in New York City / And I don't know why," to hone in on the sadness and disappointment that the song's protagonist feels, leading him to his breaking point.

A song about the struggle to find meaning in life, Ed Roland's subtle vocals are a comfort to all who listen.

The businessman takes a step back, realizing the beauty of life itself, even if his own life has not exactly turned out the way he had hoped. As we get older, we inherently begin to lose our sense of childlike innocence and wonder, and have to settle into our lives as adults. Collective Soul toes the line between what it means to no longer have that childlike innocence as a driving force in our lives, and what it means to find meaning in the little things as we age.

2 The Times They Are A-Changin'

Bob Dylan

The title track of Bob Dylan's third studio album, this song is a hymn and a campfire classic, with an opening line that just oozes late-night bonfire vibes: "Come gather 'round people / Wherever you roam." Dylan tells a story in his lyrics of the world around us as it ebbs and flows, changing constantly beyond our control. One verse in particular speaks to a recurring theme in songs about growing up, of the duality between childhood and parenthood, where Dylan sings:

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don't criticize

What you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Paired with his guitar, Dylan sings like a sage, giving sound advice to his followers about how to navigate an ever-changing world around them. In a massively prolific career, this is a song that sticks out as one of the best from his early days, fraught with life lessons not only about a changing world, but about what it means for us to change, too.

1 Jack & Diane

John Mellencamp

John Mellencamp is known for touching on themes of everyday life in America in his music, but, typically, he discusses what it means to come from the American working class. "Jack & Diane" is a song devoted to growing up in America, being a teenager in a rural town and dreaming of what comes next. It was Mellencamp's only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

The chorus is especially poignant, when Mellencamp sings, "Oh yeah, life goes on / Long after the thrill of livin' is gone." I used to take this line to mean that life goes on after death, but paired with a later line in the song, "Hold on to sixteen as long as you can," I realize it has a dual meaning. The thrill of living doesn't necessarily end when we die, but may end when we lose the feeling of what it's like to be a kid.