You know that scene in Ratatouille where the food critic tastes the food and suddenly flashes back to his childhood? That’s what a nostalgia trip feels like for me.
I’m often a little behind when it comes to music culture. For the longest time my iPod was stuck in 2006, as in, I stopped putting new music on it in after that year. So, every now and then I’ll pull up a song that I remember or that I want to listen to on a whim. Certain songs, as random as they may be, bring me back. I mean like, I remember very vivid details and emotions associated with these flashbacks.
The songs Jai Ho, Damaged and Love Story bring me back to my freshman year. I flashback to sitting at my desk in Cedritos, with its oblong rooms and unique weird stench. Feelings of uncertainty and being a total newbie flood my brain as I remember things like moving in or scrounging around for classes. I remember playing DotA and Guild Wars at that desk. I remember watching countless episodes of The George Lopez show on the TV from that seat.
DJ Earworm’s 2009 Mashup, Hide & Seek, and This is Home remind me of my sophomore year. More specifically, it reminds me of the super triple I got to live in. I remember feeling a lot of doubt going into that year, but everything changed when I saw how big my dorm room was. There was so much room for activites. A lot of good memories from that year alone; living with Brandyn, dropping weight, and getting plugged into EPIC.
Interestingly enough, the only song so far that brings me back to junior year is With Everything. It wasn’t like that year was mundane or anything. I am reminded of the first time I lived in the apartments and driving all the way up with everybody to Santa Barbara for AACF Joint Night. There wasn’t a whole lot of music listening going on since I often did homework in the kitchen, where there was more space and distractions were fewer. Study fries and thinking orange, all good ways to get through the semi-long nights of homework and projects.
Though I did not really have any interest in it until the Christmas special, I found myself listening to a lot of Sing Off numbers during my senior year. Among other things, I listened to Winning a little bit too much. But the song that sticks out the most and was the main inspiration to this nostalgia trip is Call Me Maybe. No, I wasn’t blasting it from my speakers daily; I don’t even like the song, but Lauren, whom I was living with, loved it. It brings me back to the very last week of school, where we drove up to San Luis Obispo to test our UGV project. Many long grueling hours and nights went into that project..
More specifically, I saw Man Lauren listening to this version of the song a lot..
And finally, as you know, my super senior year was riddled with study music, which you can read all about here. A tough year, but I made it!
What songs remind you of your college days?
