Back-to-school season is full of fresh beginnings and bittersweet goodbyes. Sometimes it’s hard to match the vibe when your Google Calendar is already an overlapped rainbow, you’re trying to balance your parents’ periodic calls every other half hour and you’re still waiting for your night to supposedly be a movie. So here is a queue of songs to perfectly complement whatever unpredictable roller coaster today might be.
1. “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem
The intro might sound like a car alarm or the perfect beats per minute for your evening jog depending on your mood. But, after all the anticipation, “This is how [the song] starts.” Once you get into it, you’ll feel the thrill of forging new connections and embarking on a new adventure.
2. “Dog Years” by Maggie Rogers
Do not even tell me you like Maggie Rogers until you’ve heard this one. Or, if that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me change your life really quick. An encouraging ballad over instrumentals that feels like a full friend group’s midnight car ride with the windows down is the best way to describe it. Put this on when you need a pick-me-up or possibly the best getting-ready song to date.
3. “Cico Buff” by The Cocteau Twins
Sometimes you need a vibey, unintelligible song to embrace academic weaponry (or mysteriously walk around campus). You may walk out of lab with nothing but a tear-stained copy of questionable data, but at least you look like an absolute boss while doing it.
4. “oh yeah?” by Steve Lacy
Aside from arguably being the song of the summer, Lacy’s hit juxtaposes the “tragedies and wins” in the pursuit of leaving home and starting fresh. Also, this track is so reminiscent of “Bad Habit” and will immediately sweep you out of Homewood and back to high school (for better or for worse).
5. “Never Going Back!” by Phoebe Bridgers
When homesickness and nostalgia hit you like a semi truck in the middle of a Bloomberg Student Center study session, you can always count on Phoebe… to likely make you feel worse.
6. “It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” by Olivia Dean
If you’re still on the hunt for your rom-com autumn or you just keep failing to embrace your inner Bridget Jones, this song will do it for you. Or, if you’re holed up in your dorm room over a problem set, you can at least imagine crisp walks through Central Park in an outfit straight off your Pinterest feed — right? All jokes aside, Dean’s track is centered around embracing imperfections and finding the tenacity to move forward past failures — just a few vital reminders we all need.
7. “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin
It’s a song for when you wake up and the sun is oh-so-perfectly dappled through the clouds and dances across the sidewalk or for the day when you have one class because, ultimately, those produce a similar mindset. Aretha’s buttery smooth vocals and the flute glissandos will put an infinite amount of pep in your step.
Now, all that’s left to do is put in your wired headphones (Air Pods aren’t obvious enough) and jam out to the playlist that will make sure you smoothly glide off the rollercoaster and get you through this first set of exams. Also, it probably would be a good idea to study.
