I've lived in Athens and attended Ohio University for what's near three years now; I'll officially be a senior at the beginning of the next quarter (which, I've got to say, is relatively terrifying), and with going to college in this town comes a boatload of memories, too many of which to count. When you listen to music as much as I do, those memories tend to get inextricably tangled with songs I might have been obsessed with around the same time period. It happens. So, if you'll excuse the huge dollop of sentimentality that's been ladled atop this post, here are ten songs that'd mean relatively nothing to me were it not for my time in Athens. Call it a soundtrack, or something:
10. "Lights & Music" by Cut/Copy
Sometime during the spring quarter of my freshman year, a record called In Ghost Colours by some Australian guys calling themselves Cut/Copy made it's way into my listening rotation. It completely consumed me for about a week. The brightness of the music, all bouncing synthesizers and chiming guitars and harmonies and such, was perfectly suited to all the nice weather we suddenly seemed to be having. It was sunny... and warm! Get out of here winter quarter!
09. "Crank That" by Soulja Boy Tell'em
No, please, keep reading. I'm sorry. I know. But to make this list and exclude this song would be entirely dishonest, and I've read 1984 too many times to try and alter history and pretend this song didn't exist. It did, and I think I heard the song 1,537 during my freshman year, and probably a third of those instances occurred at a single house one night sometime during fall quarter that year. So... there you have it. Lala.com, regrettably, only had the clean version.
08. "D.A.N.C.E." by Justice
On the other end of the catching, dance-worthy tunes that I tended to hear at frat houses sometimes spectrum, there's this track by Justice. It's great. It's phenomenal. This song doesn't get stuck in my head so much as it arrives there, builds colonies, massacres the natives and just doesn't ever leave. The specific reason it's on this list, is because during one shift I worked at Shively Dining Hall my freshman year, this song played on the radio we had in the back. Sometimes the refrain still reminds me of fried food.
07. "15 Step" by Radiohead
Radiohead have been everyone's favorite Important Band since around the time Kid A came out, by my estimate. On October 1, 2007, the band announced their new record with an innocuous post on their website that read, "Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days . . . We've called it In Rainbows." Radiohead message boards exploded (yes, I frequent them [or at least one of them]), and I ran down the hall of my dorm to tell my friends of this earth-shattering news. The new album would be available for free (!), legal (!!) download in a week and a half. I remember receiving the download link in my e-mail inbox the Wednesday morning of October 10, skipping class to listen to it all day, and having the biggest grin on my face the entire time.
06. "Party in the U.S.A." by Miley Cyrus
I think this is the last entry I'll feel like I have to apologize for. So, again: sorry. But this past fall quarter, you could go nowhere in Athens (and most likely a good part of the country) without hearing this song, somewhere. I have a few friends who threw a party at their house around the time. Kegs, grilled burgers, the works. They played this song 8 times in a row I think, before someone finally wrested control of the iPod and turned on something a bit more sensible.
05. "Not Your Lover" by Blitzen Trapper
This, a lonely piano ballad from Blitzen Trapper's wonderful 2008 record entitled Furr, really gets to me in ways I can't rationally explain. I was varying degrees of lovesick for the greater part of my sophomore year, when this song first came out, so there will always be some bittersweet things attached to this track... but mostly, the opening notes to this song remind me of what the 6th floor hallway in Bromley Hall smells like, where I lived that year. Weird.
04. "Paper Planes" by M.I.A.
I've learned that there's no real way to tell people that you've liked this song since 2007, a year before Pineapple Express came out, without sounding like a pretentious music nerd who has a blog and makes lists and stuff. But, when that movie hit, this song was virtually everywhere, nearing "Soulja Boy" and "Party in the U.S.A." levels, though perhaps not quite. Regardless, I'm happy to hear this song any time it comes on, so it exists on a different plane than those other two.
03. "The Modern Leper" by Frightened Rabbit
Funnily enough, this band was name-dropped by Andrew Whitman during the music journalism panel I attended last weekend. He said something to the effect of, "They're doing the indie / emo thing very, very well." I agree! From the band's not-so-innocently-titled 2008 album The Midnight Organ Fight comes "The Modern Leper," a song I couldn't shake for a month or two during the beginning of my sophomore year. I think it racked up about 50 plays in my iTunes during that time period. Were it not for headphones, my roommate would have gotten very, very sick of this song, I'm sure.
02. "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan
Sometime during my sophomore year, I learned how to play this song. I somehow managed to memorize every word, or at least knew them all for a certain period of time, because now that I don't play it so often anymore, I struggle to get through it sometimes without flubbing a line somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd verse. My band played this one a lot last year, the first time being an absolute mess at Jackie O's during open mic. I was impressed with remembering all the words, but less so with how we botched the timing before nearly every chorus... we've gotten better at it, I promise.
01. "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show
Another song I learned how to play for my friends last year, but pre-dating the formation of our band. Our band does play it, all the time, but it originated with me and a guitar and a bunch of friends hanging out in someone's dorm room at 2:00 AM every weekend night. It went from being a song that I played to a song that everyone played, all in the room shouting along the lyrics and just loving the hell out of every second. I can hardly think of a song I'm more emotionally attached to for that very reason, and as such, it gets top honors here. I'm still kinda pissed off I didn't see Old Crow Medicine Show when they played in Nelsonville last quarter...
-WD
Doja Cat Is Not For The Children
1 hour ago
Love this one, WD!
ReplyDelete: ) my heart is with #1 and #2! great picks!
ReplyDeleteI love how you related all these songs to experiences you've had in college. There are so many songs that remind me of the past three years in Athens and, while some of them may not be songs I am particularly fond of (such as "Party in the U.S.A.) the experiences I associate them with help define my college years.
ReplyDeleteYour number one song--Probably one of my all-time favs.
ReplyDeleteI've followed OCMS since before they became popular and this song gets me going and dancin' every time. I did see them in Nelsonville--an amazing evening...
Thanks for the great list--I really enjoyed your background to each selection.
Loved this posting- great to hear about some of your experiences. Trust me when I tell you- you aren't the first and won't be the last to flub the timing of the chorus in Like a Rolling Stone!
ReplyDelete