Sometimes I think about how the songs I listen to affect my mood. For instance, what kind of songs should I listen to when I’m sad? Do I listen to this sad song to wallow in my low feelings? Do I listen to more happy music to cheer me up? I’ve never been able to find the right answer to that question. However, I always associate the song I listen to most any given week with my mood. When I think about it a little further, I wonder how the top song every month reflected my overall mood during that time frame. I’m pretty bad at keeping track of stuff like this, and I should get better. For one thing, no matter how hard I try, Spotify won’t tell me my top songs every month. 

I started feeling a little more pressure lately to document my music listening when I started thinking about the fact that I’ll be graduating in a couple of months. Since I’ve come to Brown, I have been very fortunate to get to know really smart people and discover really cool songs. And with every new semester at Brown, something new has always come up, and there has always been another song for me to obsess over. 

I would like to take a look back at my most-listened-to song for every semester I’ve been at Brown. Think of it as a trip down memory lane, and hey, you might get to know me a little bit better. I truly recommend these songs, and hopefully they’re fun to listen to in the background while you’re reading this!

Freshman Fall, 2022: “What a Pleasure” by Beach Fossils

When I was eighteen years old, after Mom tearfully hugged me goodbye, I felt a little unsure of myself. Hell, what was I even going to study at school? Suppressing all that anxiety, I started my musical journey in college by obsessively listening to music everywhere I went. At the time, I was interested in hip-hop, specifically the more alternative kind. I remember hanging up posters of albums like Circles by Mac Miller and We Got It from Here…Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest. I was also pretty bummed when Brockhampton broke up. It didn’t feel any better that their last album wasn’t a good one.

If there’s one thing that TikTok was good at—other than ruining my attention span—it was putting me on with some cool songs. One of those songs was “What a Pleasure” by Beach Fossils. It opens with a cheerful pop guitar riff, and it’s hella nostalgic vibes. I think its lyrics—describing a narrator far away from their love and free to be somewhere new—were a little bit too true to me as well. However, even with all this new happiness, sometimes, “I’d take it all away.” I’d listen to the catchy guitar and groovy bass while navigating campus with Google Maps and exploring the Providence area. I also started buying vinyl for the first time!

At the start of my freshman year, I constantly wondered if I even deserved to come to Brown. I thought everyone else was miles ahead of me. Hell, I still think like that a lot of the time, nearly four years later. I remember taking a wide variety of classes that year, none of which were even in the concentration I wound up choosing. But by December, I realized that it was okay to feel this way. I was only just getting started, right? How fast could the time fly by?

Freshman Spring, 2023: “Little Dreamer” by Van Halen

Something I remember doing often during my freshman year was playing music on my speaker while I showered. If you lived with me on the fourth floor of James-Mead, I hope I wasn’t too loud. I always tried to time the showers so that I stepped out right when the cool part of a song happened. One of the songs that I most frequently listened to was “Little Dreamer.”

As part of buying vinyl and rediscovering my love for classic rock, I started to listen to albums in full. I eventually stumbled upon the Van Halen debut, their self-titled album. I thought, how cheesy are these guys? Turns out, very. It was guitar solo after guitar solo, backed by lyrics that are loud and proud. But it rocked, and I was obsessed. With all Van Halen’s common themes of women, love, and running from devils, I found that “Little Dreamer” diverged from those ideas. The goal of the song isn’t to compel you to dance, but rather to sway back and forth with the distant melancholia of how far you’ve come. I found hope with David Lee Roth singing, “You are the little dreamer.”

This is a semester I look back on a lot. I started getting more involved with writing, I took my first English course, and I branched out and made more friends. I think nothing ever beats your first spring at Brown when the weather starts to warm up, and people begin parading around the Main Green. I always thought those Instagram reels were cute—students skateboarding, playing spikeball, or doing other outdoorsy stuff. Usually, the background of the reels plays some sappy love song. In my opinion, Van Halen is the way to go.

Sophomore Fall, 2023: “I Know It’s Over” by Jeff Buckley

Holy shit, this semester was awful. Transitioning from the highlights of freshman spring to the unfortunate lowlights of this semester was just devastating. Let’s see. I tried venturing into a STEM concentration, and I signed up for a math class. I had to drop it because I couldn’t keep up, so I took three classes that semester. That imposter syndrome was more prevalent then. Around Thanksgiving, I caught a stomach bug that kept me on my floor for about eight hours, and I could barely fall asleep. At one point, I was seeing somebody for a while, and it was going well until she broke up with me for someone else. So yeah, general sadness all around.

It was hard to choose a song. I had a lot of good, sad ones to choose from. However, in my opinion, there was one singer I knew who made those long walks down George Street make me feel less alone. When it gets cold and bitter, Buckley is the way to go. His rendition of The Smiths’ tune is emotional and barren, with only one voice and one guitar. The pleading shouts towards the end of the song really twist the knife that much more. Felt.

Getting back up after this semester took a lot, not going to lie. But I’m glad I did.

Sophomore Spring, 2024: “Happy” by The Rolling Stones

New semester, new me. It was this semester that I took Creative Nonfiction, arguably my favorite class I’ve ever taken at Brown. A little goes a long way, and one article that I read for that class inadvertently led me to my thesis topic about rock criticism. All of a sudden, I started to have more responsibilities with all the clubs I was involved in, and my schedule stretched beyond what I ever thought. Not to mention, I was back to taking four classes. And I was really glad.

I found myself listening to a lot of The Who as I was spiraling down the well of ’60s and ’70s classic rock once more. I started listening to a record that brought me back to enjoying the campus, and I was moving on from the tragedies of the previous semester. My dad gave me a record that was one of his personal favorites when he was my age, Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones. It ain’t the best song, it ain’t the most popular, but damn does it make me happy. I was itching to dance to the catchy guitar and Keith Richards’s ecstatic singing. The spring weather always shines a little brighter with the right song, and I was in bliss.

Around this time, I was grappling with the idea of studying abroad. I was thinking about St Andrews, as I had recently declared English as my concentration. I was excited to think about living in Scotland while studying more literature, but I ultimately decided not to go. There were many reasons why: I had joined a band on campus. My fraternity needed me more than ever. I was having too much fun on my Frisbee team. I asked myself one question that made me decide to stay: “What would I miss if I left Brown?” Staying was the best decision in my college career.

Junior Fall, 2024: “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors

I was attending the first session of a songwriting class this semester, and as an icebreaker, we were asked what our favorite lyrics were. Everyone else spouted some heartbreaking lyric or a beautiful line of poetry within a song. The first thought that came to me was the lyrics from “Roadhouse Blues.” In particular, “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer / The future is uncertain, and the end is always near.” Honestly, that was the vibe this semester.

I’m fairly sure it’s that guitar riff that did it for me. It’s so simple, but so, so, so fun. The complete lunacy with which Jim Morrison sings is wild, and that guitar solo is untamed and off the wall. However, even with all the fun the song is, there are some dark elements that showcase that it’s focused and aimed towards something mysterious. That’s the wild intrigue that I get from The Doors in general.

It was a little wild for me, class-wise. I had an 8:30 a.m. class, along with two seminars and one Tuesday/Thursday class that started at 2:30 p.m. I had the worst sleep schedule this semester by far, and I felt a bit more erratic than usual. Because of my single concentration, I had the ability to start taking classes that I wanted to take for fun, so I took the songwriting class and a beginner music production course. 

While this sounds fun and all, I also learned this semester that I needed to prioritize my well-being. I realized that I was drifting from some of my first friends, but that I had more people to rely on than I realized. With the music and English classes, I started getting to know more people.

Junior Spring, 2025: “Sinking Down” by Boyscott

Man, this was a really tough semester for me to decide on a song. There are just so many good ones. To be fair, it’s not entirely my fault that I have so many options. I started seeing my girlfriend, and now it’s like I carry music for two.

There was one moment where I was sitting in the Rock and listening to this band called Boyscott. My band had booked a gig with them at AS220, and I was also going to try to interview them. I was giving their first album a listen, and I came upon this song. Have you ever listened to a song once and known that it was going to be a keeper? Just like that, I fell into a trance of daydreaming bliss, as I stared out the window and took in the sunshine hitting my desk, while this instrumental track fueled my helpless mind with good energy.

I remember ending this semester on a high, where I put in all the tough work and several leadership commitments to come out on top. I experimented more with music production, took a difficult English class, and took my first MCM class. However, I was most accomplished in the independent study that I did with one of my professors. This independent study, which stemmed from that article in my sophomore spring semester, allowed me to apply and get permission to start my thesis!

All the while, I felt the deep sensation that I had to say goodbye to the seniors at the time. I kept thinking, “That’s going to be me next year.”

Senior Fall, 2025: “Midnight on the Bay” by The Stills-Young Band

Senior season! You know how, when you were younger, you thought all the seniors you knew had their shit together? I’ll be honest, that is not true at all. I was still scrambling to make sure everything was going tidy. This was my first time off-campus, and living in an apartment on my own with two roommates came with its own set of challenges. Starting a thesis was also a huge pain in the ass, on top of the fact that this was going to be my last year at college. Seems like everything’s just a mess.

And yet, I was surrounded by lovely people. And with the right people, yes, even the roommates, I was able to keep it all together. And the music I listened to made sure that everything was calm at the end of it all. I stumbled upon this song, and it couldn’t have fit better. The soothing voice of Neil Young and the subtle production are hopeful. Oddly enough, it feels like I’m down by India Point Park, watching the sun set and the ships pulling into the bay, as well as biking down the whole East Bay Bike Path.

I wish this semester had ended on a positive note, where everyone could have watched the snow together in warmth, while songs like these were playing all night long.

Senior Spring, 2026: “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” by James Ingram and Patti Austin

So, last semester, huh? And then I’m out into the real world. I’m so used to the comfort of this campus, these people. And moving on from it all is a really scary thought. The thesis that I’ve been working on for the past year is going to be due before I know it, and all the classrooms are going to be a memory I once experienced. 

“How do you keep the song from fading too fast? / How do you lose yourself to someone / And never lose your way?”

I’m extremely grateful that I get to be part of an institution like this one. I will miss the sweltering heat, the extreme snow, the heartbreaks, the parties, the friends, the highs, the lows; I will never forget how this place could make me feel. And yet, I feel like I’m running out of music to put it all into one feeling.

It ain’t the end of the world. This is just the beginning of adult life after all. Who knows what kind of music will carry me forward.