The Freshmen – The Verve Pipe
This song is an almost perfect litmus test. For those of a particular age, it hit like a ton of bricks, capturing the complexity and pain of growing up. But for those who weren’t precisely situated, it’s over-the-top garbage.
I was just a year past being a freshman myself, and it came out right in the midst of the most tumultuous few months of my entire life—marked by some pretty extreme trauma (in the form of a car accident that almost killed one friend, seriously hurt several others, and probably would have killed me if I hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt), and the sort of relationships that can only emerge out of such shared pain and terror.
Almost a decade ago I wrote down some of my reflections about that night. I went back and read them today, and the following line really captures why this song matters so much to me: “For the first time in my life, I discovered what it means to have a friend, because before that night, I had never really needed anyone to love me.”
Just because it’s melodramatic doesn’t mean it’s not true.
This song is about that kind of feeling, which can only be provoked the dawning realization that out of nowhere you’ve become old enough to face genuinely adult problems.
So I rarely listen to it these days, because my better (more ironically distant and critically-aware) self understands how ridiculous a song it actually is. But when I do listen, I toss all that aside and embrace the moment. Basically, I still want to be the sort of person who is capable of feeling this song in my gut.
I think we’ve all got a song or two we feel that way about.