The start of a school year is an excellent time to listen to new music.
This is, of course, because every day of the year is an excellent time to listen to new music. There is a near-infinite supply of the stuff and only a limited window in which any of us can consume it. You could spend 24 hours a day listening exclusively to albums you had never previously heard and, by the end of your life, you will have only scratched the surface of all the music that has ever been made.
To celebrate the start of the fall term, I set myself the task of making a 10-track playlist of songs that are only tangentially related to school. This is not a collection of songs that deal with the subject of education, nor are they necessarily performed by bands I know to be popular amongst my peers. In most cases, they are entirely without direct lyrical reference to school beyond a title or a single phrase broad enough that it could refer to almost anything. It’s a wonder I didn’t strain a muscle with all my stretching.
The result is a set of tunes as eclectic as a first-year student’s course load. Please enjoy.
“Can You Get To That” — Funkadelic, Maggot Brain (1971).
Our university’s enormous campus will have many a late student stressing about whether they can “get to that” class on time, perhaps while grooving to this funk classic.
“Life During Wartime” — Talking Heads, Fear of Music (1979).
I sure hope no one took David Byrne’s advice and “burned all [their] notebooks.” Contrary to what he would tell you, notebooks do in fact “help [you] survive” your courses. You might need to review them before an exam — you’ll thank me later!
“Matrix” — Chick Corea, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (1968).
This jaunty little number for piano, bass and drums goes out to the linear algebra students.
“Sculpture I” — Ellen Arkbro, Sounds While Waiting (2023).
You know how sometimes a professor will be one minute late to a class and this will immediately prompt some joker to crack wise about how if they don’t show up within 15 minutes, you’re all allowed to leave? Well, here’s a 14-minute dissonant organ piece you can play as a countdown timer if you need some “sounds while waiting” for your professor to arrive.
“Out to Lunch” — Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch! (1964).
Pro tip: eating lunch is an effective way to restore some of your energy in between afternoon classes. Another effective way to restore energy? Listening to this jazz standard, which I have strategically placed fifth in the list of 10 songs to represent lunch’s status as the middle meal of the day.
“S.P.Q.R.” — This Heat, Deceit (1981).
I suspect that the reason many of us attend university is because of the institution’s function as a mechanism for upward class mobility — or, as the song puts it, because we live in a society where “we organize via property as power.”
“Whitetail” — Low, Things We Lost in the Fire (2001).
I was hoping to include the influential slowcore group in this playlist somewhere, as I have been going through a Low phase for about two months now. Imagine my delight when recalling that the song’s opening lyric is “stay up all night” — something I have frequently had to do after procrastinating an important essay.
“Inside the Golden Days of Missing You” — Silver Jews, The Natural Bridge (1996).
Only the late, great David Berman would dare to ask the question, “What if life is just some hard equation / On a chalkboard in a science class for ghosts?” I often find myself wondering if there is any point to all this academic strife if I am going to die anyway. This guy gets it.
“I Say ‘No’” — Mount Eerie, Dawn (2008).
A nice companion piece to the preceding song. Lest I start fixating too much on my eventual demise, Phil Elverum reminds me to “find life where [I] foolishly saw graves.”
“Table” — Katy Kirby, Blue Raspberry (2024).
This song has nothing whatsoever to do with school. I cannot find even the most tenuous connection, which makes it an appropriate inclusion at the end of my playlist. For one thing, it is the closing track of one of my favourite albums of the year to date. For another, it fits in thematically with how I will sometimes slack off as I approach the end of a semester, safe in the knowledge that I have already done enough to pass my courses.
“Cs get degrees,” as they say.
