I remember Saturday afternoons in an apartment with a study room, the only house I ever lived in with a study room. I would crack open the window and pull aside the curtains, and I could hear the neighbours’ kids running about with their play pretends and the aunty downstairs washing her dishes and putting them out to dry. I would do my Math homework on my sister’s desk, because my desk was still a two feet tall desk from kindergarten with the alphabets on it, and I was already in primary school by then. I would turn on the beat-up stereo, with the dusty cassette players, and tune in to the World Chart Show on Radio 4. I would listen to the hosts’ perky American voices talking ever so fakely and laughing ever so happily, as they introduced the chart toppers in the 90’s.
It was probably my favourite music era, when music was still honest and they still meant something more than skin deep. There was One Headlight by The Wallflowers, Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, Push by Matchbox 20 – back when they still spell ‘twenty’ numerically – Goo Goo Dolls with Iris, and The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony, The Cardigans‘ Lovefool… I can go on forever.
You know how it was like when you were young and you listened to songs because you liked how the music sounds, without actually knowing what they really mean. Then when you are much older and you hear the song again and actually paid attention, and you realise that the guy is not actually singing about the birds and bees in the garden, but something else totally different. And it just makes you see the song in a whole new light.
That is kind of how it was for me with The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe. I never knew what the song was about, I just liked it when the song opened with the most honest guitar rifts, followed by Brian Vander Ark’s painful words of regret about his ex-girlfriend’s abortion. I never knew what he meant for probably five years before I heard it again , and actually realised what he meant. It was the day I sat in front of the TV and saw the music video, and just paused to breathe in this new knowledge. Whilst some people may start frowning upon songs they used to love after they read what was in between the lines, I could not have loved this song more.
Ah, what I would give to be 10 again, back in that apartment, doing the simplest Math questions as if they were the toughest, and listening to chirpy American DJs playing songs that meant the world to the songwriters.
Do you still remember your earliest memory with your love for music? Do share.
Download The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe HERE.
Posted by Celeste 
