Where are the Water Fountains on the 12th floor of Robarts? A Back to School Playlist
Tracklist:
- The Sea Is Deep and the World Is Wide – Love Fame Tragedy
- Coming of Age – Foster The People
- Lisztomania – Phoenix
- Honestly – Hippo Campus
- overbehind – flor
- Chemicals – Rosemary Fairweather
- Clueless – The Marías
- Greek Tragedy (Oliver Nelson TikTok Remix) – The Wombats, Oliver Nelson
- Hot Rod – Dayglow
- HML – Sisyfuss
- Chinese New Year – SALES
- Trojans – Atlas Genius
Welcome back to campus!
This year brings you in-person classes, a million pages of readings, new friends (or maybe even lovers), and hoping that someone will approach you in front of Sidney Smith as you sit outside, eating fries, and try to come up with why specifically you stand out from everyone else doing the same thing. Your room is decorated with little knick knacks from home. Sometimes you pace back and forth in it, planning the week out aloud despite being the only one in the room. The floor makes your feet dirty. You study dutifully in Robarts, taking notes on the same journal article for hours. Eventually, you wander the dark stacks looking for something—you’re not sure what, but you know it must be found.
This playlist, which goes along to all of the above scenarios, is along the spectrum of alt rock and indie pop (with the occasional trumpet mixed in). We start off with an instrumental to set the mood and then dive into a liminal musical journey that may or may not embody how it feels to walk out of a lecture hall after a three-hour class: eyes squinting in the sunlight, legs slightly sore, throat dry perhaps. It leans towards a bittersweet mood, one that is half upbeat yet half daydreamy/fugue state inducing.
Along with a couple of popular songs from TikTok (to entice the hesitant listener), there are plenty of quirky electric guitar rhythms and synth-y melodies to tap your foot to. There are also a wide variety of lyrics, to cater to any university-related scenario including themes of love, starting anew, disappointment in oneself, and feeling undermined by that one person who keeps on assuming you know less than you actually do. My personal favourite is in a soundbite at the beginning of Hippo Campus’s “Honestly”: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I suck, I suck!” To which another band member playfully replies, “Yeah you do!”
I think this playlist is best listened to on a mildly chilly day, when the city is at the brink of falling into a proper Autumn. Indoors or outdoors, it doesn’t matter — go live out that dark academia movie scene or that brightly colour-graded romcom. Listen to this while you walk, saunter, or dance along the asphalt streets on campus.