I treat fall music like a competitive sport. The atmosphere of fall is a vibe like no other, and my attempt to capture that sensation is always the highlight of my year. Fall allows for dozens of musical avenues, whether it be emo, folk, or soul, but to me fall can be captured with a theme rather than a sound. This year the music of fall continuously turns to love. It’s a time where fledging romance gets to flourish, a season that feels warm despite the cooling temperatures. This playlist seeks to represent those feelings of love in the fall, ranging from folksy crushes to orchestral musings on age.

The playlist begins with “Perpetuum Mobile” from Penguin Café Orchestra, which can only be described as a love song with no words. The song steadily traverses up and down twinkly arpeggios as strings occasionally interrupt the musical clockwork with swelling chords. A perfect song to kick off a season of romance, as its meaning is up to you. Perhaps the jumpy violins encapsulate your naïve excitement for the new few months, or the staccato piano reminds you of the coziness of your current relationship, or maybe the soaring strings wash you in an all too familiar melancholy. Either way, fall isn’t just about new beginnings, it’s about your new beginning, and with “Perpetuum Mobile,” you set the stage for what the next 8 songs mean to you.

Sam Cooke’s “(What A) Wonderful World” ushers us into reality by reminding us of our fall responsibilities including history, biology, and French. His smooth croon seeks to jolt us out of our summer daze and rope us back into reality. And the reality is the summer break has reduced our literacy to that of a 3^rd grade level and we’ve forgotten our multiplication tables. The return to school is dizzying and elusive, we can hardly keep pace. “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” from the Magnetic Fields similarly communicates the return to class as Stephen Merrit unloads a laundry list of academic peers such as Harry, Chris, John, and Professor Blumen over a jumpy synth beat. Both songs malign the stresses of school from prom to algebra, but neither is really about school. Rather, a potent and innocent love defines these two songs. They take place in crowded halls and classrooms, but their hearts hang far above the monotony of schoolwork, held up by wide-eyed longing. These two songs capture the feeling of sitting by the window seat of the library, books piled above your head with the tiniest sliver of window as your view to the outside world. Somehow you manage to catch the glance of the right person at the right time. Next thing you know the remainder of your notes on cell division have the i’s dotted with little hearts.

The following songs (“Piazza,” “New York Catcher;” and “Absolutely Cuckoo”) showcase the reigning champion of autumnal music, acoustic twee. However, while they’re built from basic strumming and soft vocals, the songs are anything but simple. Innocent love is complicated by self loathing, time, commitments, distance, and a litany of baseball references. While fall is fun and the emergence of autumn romance makes us all feel like kids again, it’s not a season without its hardships. And sometimes beneath jumpy major chords and Stuart Murdoch’s delightful singing are problems more complex than peppy twee.

The next two songs create a romantic contrast. “Anyone Else But You” and “Seeing Other People” cover two relationships; one steeped in lovestruck gullibility and the other plagued by a myriad of problems from sexuality to secrets. They’re both soft songs, but in remarkably different ways. One is cozy, the other is bruised, both doing their absolute best to convey their feelings. Autumn is a month defined by the indoors as much as it is the outdoors. Big wool sweaters and a good book open the doors to a renewed vulnerability formerly suffocated by the summer’s raucous weekends and sun-baked afternoons. Whether it be beauty or sadness, fall always leaves us with a lump in our throat, and these two songs capture that essence.

The playlist’s musical climax comes in the form of Feist’s seminal iPod anthem “1234.” Its twangy strings and lyrics reminiscent of Sesame Street harken to the crushes of Sam Cooke while Feist’s introspection on youthful love is as insightful as The Magnetic Fields’. “1234” is a song of change, ubiquitous with twee, folk, orchestra, and indie while exploring themes of age, love, fame, and money. Fall is a season that demands reinvention, it literally changes colors, it couldn’t be more obvious. “1234” is a shapeless love song, one that loudly celebrates change with horn crescendos over a chanting choir where Feist invites the listener to be transformed in a similarly bombastic sense.

Of course, while fall’s colorful metamorphosis brings a flurry of fallen leaves amid howling winds, it eventually ends. And when it’s just you beneath the dead trees, the best thing to do is look back, “Thirteen” by Big Star is a song that does exactly that. Love in “Thirteen” is static, a snapshot of adolescent love frozen in a handful of soft acoustic chords. After Feist brought every idea of love together and crashed it into the ground, Big Star picks the intact pieces from the wreckage and takes them to a place hidden from the real world. After 8 songs of love that continuously examines and reexamines the very idea under different contexts, “Thirteen” makes it raw. Tickets for the dance and short walks home from school are a pure untethered love. Whether the song is gentle and sweet or nostalgic and bittersweet is up to the listener. Fall’s romantic side is intense, yet it is malleable. While this playlist covers 9 different love stories, it has no definitive thesis. Fall is about reinvention, punctuated by a new school year and the limbo between seasons. To love in the fall is to be changed, to define yourself and choose your own story – hopefully, this playlist can be the perfect score to your romantic autumnal chronicle.

Tracklist:

1. Perpetuum Mobile – Penguin Cafe Orchestra
2. (What A) Wonderful World – Sam Cooke
3. The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side – The Magnetic Fields
4. Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle and Sebastian
5. Absolutely Cuckoo – The Magnetic Fields
6. Anyone Else But You – The Moldy Peaches
7. Seeing Other People – Belle and Sebastian
8. 1234 – Feist
9. Thirteen – Big Star

Listen to the playlist HERE!