By Charlotte Squire
I’ll admit it. For a month straight after an ill-fated breakup with a typical floppy-haired, skinny legged Skidmore boy, I couldn’t hear any Red Hot Chilli Peppers music without crying. Arguably, it was better than sleeping with someone with good taste so that the tainted memories of our lost love didn’t bring with them any albums of great critical acclaim, but tearing up at “Scar Tissue” in the Stewart’s ice cream aisle wasn’t a good look either. Therefore, to save you the face of shedding tears to Middle School Boy music, I’ve compiled three tracks that you can easily plug into your Spotify rotation and substitute whatever vague notion of romance being presented for your Tinder-date-dreamboat of the month.
1. Fade Into You- Mazzy Star (for the lover with which the idea of a relationship is far more substantive than an actual relationship)
You’ve watched Baz Lurhman’s Romeo + Juliet. You’ve put on the ugliest chunkiest shoes you could thrift. You’ve started a bullet journal just to throw it away in frustration when you realized that your calligraphy would never be as good as the girl who bullied you in middle school who is now a nursing student. In short– you’re a romantic. Why not punch it up with a dramatic soundtrack? “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star is the perfect mix of vague and saccharine; you can sit on the CDTA while it rains and gaze out the window and think of the Dhall worker who swiped you in with the crooked smile or your hookup of three months who still won’t let you sleep overnight in his apartment. Then, when the affair is all said and done and the dishrag of love has been thoroughly wrung and hung out to dry, you can listen to this track all over again and wondered what it would have been like had you really confessed your true feelings to the girl you met at Putnam after spending a semester in Drawing I together and never learning her name.
2. Harvard- Diet Cig (for the former lover whose new partner is better than you)
So maybe your ex girlfriend’s new boyfriend happens to have gone from Andover to Berkley to grad school at Columbia, TAing philosophy courses that would make your B- in Death And Dying shrivel with envy. But fuck him! And fuck her, too! You didn’t go to boarding school! Okay, well, you didn’t go to public school either, just private day school, but still! Your parents aren’t investment bankers or media magnates! Just a humble doctor and lawyer marriage. Still, you get what Diet Cig means. You’re not a Harvard student, you went to Skidmore. You’re weird and freaky and maybe your normie-loving ex just couldn’t wrap their head around the fact that you’d rather see Tame Impala live than go to the opera. You’re different. Yeah, maybe your ex can brag about the fact that their new partner has an “internship” with “the design team at Ikea”, but you can brag about the fact that you got kicked out of a 10am screening of the new Joker movie for getting too high and barfing in some geriatric’s popcorn.
3. Wouldn’t It Be Nice- The Beach Boys (for the lover that never was)
The year? 1968. You’re a freshman in high school and you’ve locked yourself in your room. Your parents have forbade you from seeing Chip Schwartz, senior hearthrob and captain of both the varsity football team and the boat set sail to take your virginity. You know you’re meant to be together. You can’t eat your peas and carrots and your little brother tells you your pout is going to give you wrinkles. Your record of “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore is worn out and where else do you turn but to the sordid words of The Beach Boys. It’s a tale as old as time. Separated by time, place, age… This track is perfect for picturing the star-crossed romance between blue side and red side that could never be or the torrid affair that you know you and your hot professor have the chemistry to initiate, if only you weren’t so hung up on preserving his marriage since he spends the first 25 minutes of every class showing you pictures of his family, notably cutting in half the time you have to spend pretending you did the reading. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a car and could drive to lax house to meet Brett instead of waiting for the always-late bus? Wouldn’t it be nice if South quad mattresses smelled just a little less acrid when guests of the fairer sex were coming over? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more than one dining hall and you didn’t have to stare down and smile at the boy you fellatiated during SCOOP as he grabs a bowl of jasmine rice from Emily’s Garden? Wouldn’t it be nice? It would. It really would.
Oct 29, 2019
featured image: Mazzy Star