John Mellencamp "Jack & Diane"

Is there a song that encapsulates Americana better than "Jack & Diane"? Jack grew up in the heartland and wanted to be a football star but first was busy trying to get in Diane's pants. Aside from the tale of two American teenagers, the lyric that must stuck out to me was "hold onto sixteen as long as you can". When I was 17 years old, I wrote a feature story about it for my high school newspaper. Everyone always tells us that these would be remembered as the best days of our lives, yet I didn't care for those years at all. It had to get better, no? Thankfully, it did.