“Nobody” by Mitski
Imagine this: it’s one o’clock A.M., you have homework for four classes that you haven’t even started, you have two projects due tomorrow, your parents are fed up with your late-night procrastination, and worst of all, you don’t have a song to listen to as the whole world slowly collapses around you. Enter “Nobody,” Mitski’s second single from her acclaimed 2018 album, Be The Cowboy: a song that describes that lonely feeling of schoolwork anxiety and social alienation. A great song to play on loop, Mitski’s emotional piano triads and catchy bass lines remind you who can save you from your miseries: nobody.
“It’s All Over” by Johnny Cash
An acoustic ballad featured on Cash’s posthumous album, Personal File, the lyrics tell a simple tale of broken hearts and lost love. Cash teaches himself, and the listener, that when the people we love don’t love us back, all we can and should do is “stop your cryin’, turn around and let her go.” After all, when times get tough, and we lose our way, just remember: Johnny Cash is dead, and soon we will be too.
“(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem)” by Car Seat Headrest
Will Toledo, frontman of the band Car Seat Headrest, describes the songs in their 2016 album, Teens of Denial, as “improperly internalized religious thought.” “Drugs With Friends,” one of those songs, synthesizes religious fear and imagery with drug trips Toledo experienced firsthand; in a vision, Jesus Christ chastises the eponymous Joe with 1 Corinthians 4:13 and Joe calls his drug-induced environment “Sodom.” Toledo believes that any one of us could become or already is a “Joe,” someone who resorts to drugs or addiction in order to fill the void in their heart, but regardless, he ironically comments that “drugs are better with friends; friends are better with drugs.”
“Nausea” by Jeff Rosenstock
As high school students, angst is especially prevalent within the confines of our minds, and that same angst asks questions like: what am I doing? What am I doing here? Where am I going to be in ten years? Will everything be alright in the end? With saxophone solos, power-pop piano melodies, surrealist lyrics, and murky vocals, Rosenstock describes his mid-life angst and his desire to better himself both physically and mentally away from a life of late-night drinking and Sartresian dread: an escape from “evenings of silence and mornings of nausea.”
“Longtime Sunshine” by Rivers Cuomo
On the same subject of angst, Rivers Cuomo, frontman of the band Weezer, wrote “Longtime Sunshine” to personally reflect on his own angst and to attempt to look optimistically towards the future, a future where he can “build a house with a wood stove or a fireplace” or “settle down with a good woman.” We, as students, as human beings, all have the potential to persevere through our own troubles until we “get someplace where we can truly rest.” Or we can all just give up instead.
“Why Bother?” by Weezer
In their 1996 album Pinkerton, Weezer manages to fit a song with an intro, three verses, a solo, and an outro into only two minutes, describing a struggle of sexual frustration and romantic weariness with crunchy guitar playing and confessional and intensive vocal harmonies. No snarky comment necessary.
“Heat Wave” by Snail Mail
2019 is set to be the hottest year ever. But before we face our own extinction crisis at the hands of climate change, listen to Snail Mail’s love song, the second single from her 2018 album, Lush. Describing a metaphorical heat wave of emotions, the narrator faces and overcomes an unrequited love. The perfect song to listen to as we slowly make our Earth a living hell.
“NO FUN” by Joji
The summer is over. But that doesn’t mean the fun has to end there for you. Unless you’re George Miller—under the moniker Joji—on his 2018 album BALLADS 1, in which all of your friends have left you because the summer is over and because you’re self-centered, so now you desperately and hedonistically look for something to distract yourself from your own social anxiety and crippling imposter syndrome. Or maybe that’s exactly how you are.
“Sukiyaki (Ue o Muite Arukō)” by Kyu Sakamoto
Despite Sakamoto’s cheerful tone, “Sukiyaki” (named by English-speaking producers because it was easier to say than its original title and it was recognizably Japanese) is a tune filled with dejection and melancholy. In between his carefree whistling, Sakamoto laments that “I look up when I walk so that the tears won’t fall . . . I am all alone tonight.” Reaching the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1963, Sakamoto provides a great lesson for young freshmen today walking down the halls this year: keep your head up, so everyone can see you cry.
Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7nNsEZlXeeX7FavCHIpW8N