#mcbride circle

3. Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe - Kendrick Lamar I probably have heard this song about 600-800 times, and it brings me right back to bike co-op house, where M.A.A.D. city was basically playing on repeat all of the time. I still remember singing along to this track each and every time it came on with bike house residents Steve Nisi, Jake Lorber, Sam Ebert, and Willie Udell (along with frequent bike co-op affiliates Nate Diresta and Pieter Stougaard). What makes this song so damn compelling? The melancholic guitar-backed beat? The absolutely incredible hook? Kendrick’s flow? How it makes you feel when the drums kick in? I can’t decide. I think what strikes me most is the feeling of aloneness it cultivates. I feel like this song was produced on one of the moons of Saturn and beamed back to Earth thousands of years after the original artist died. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone, but that’s what it makes me feel. Maybe you can relate.

4. It’s Not Meant to Be - Tame Impala In my sophomore year, I started a band with two good buddies of mine called “Daddy Longlegs.” We were slated to play our first concert, a three-song set that included this Tame Impala tune at the BFEC (Brown Family Environmental Center). Unfortunately, the night of the concert was the very same night that the infamous Apple Valley murders happened. For those of us who have forgotten or weren’t there, a guy kidnapped four people and murdered two of them. They found the bodies stuffed in the hollow of a tree about 15 minutes from the Kenyon campus, and it was really freaky to say the least. As a result, the school initiated a lockdown and cancelled all campus events, which meant that Daddy Longlegs’ first concert was caput. We never played an official gig together. Thinking of it now, it’s a beautiful synchronicity that the title of the song we were going to play accurately described the fate of our band: Not meant to be.

5. Osaka Loop Line - Discovery For some reason, this song takes me right back to the old Bexley apartments. This is one of those songs that stirs up a beautiful sadness within me. Partly because of its content, but also because it reminds me of a friend of mine who turned out to be not so great of a friend. I thought this person cared about me and my wellbeing, and it turned out that he didn’t care as much as I thought, which at the time really shook me up. So I guess there’s a bittersweetness to this particular song. I don’t hold any hatred for this person at all. In fact, I thank him for treating me the way he did, because looking back on it, he helped me find the strength to care for myself without needing anything from anyone. What a precious gift that he didn’t even know he was giving me! That’s the thing about the adversity we face in life: we always have the choice to find the deeper message and move on with love and gratitude and compassion for those who treated us unkindly. I guess leads to my next selection quite nicely...

6. Empathy - Crystal Castles I was super into Crystal Castles’ eponymous debut album, and I was super stoked when their second eponymous album came out during my Freshman year. I remember downloading this album as soon as it was available, putting it on my iPod, and walking around in the dark smoking cigarettes and listening to it all the way through. (For a time, I smoked American Spirit Periques, by far one of the nastiest cigarettes in existence. I probably couldn’t even finish ONE of them now.) In my earliest years of college, I was a very depressed person, as many of us are. But there was something in this album, and in Crystal Castles’ sound in general, that really spoke to me. It was saying, here’s something messy, here’s something dark, here’s something raw, abused, glitchy and fucked-up… and it’s fucking beautiful, at least to my ears. I sat on a bench in the parking circle near the McBride dormitory and looked deep into the cloudy purplish sky while listening to this album and I remember thinking, “maybe life isn’t so bad if music like this is allowed to exist.” In retrospect It was perhaps my first significant contact with the fundamental sense of “okayness” that I feel today on a consistent basis. Thank you for helping me, Crystal Castles.

7. Doobie Ashtray - Devin the Dude This was one of those songs that was always in rotation. I remember playing round after round of Durak, the Russian card game that went viral in the Kenyon community in my junior year, and this song was a mainstay. This is one of those songs like “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” that is dope, but it also just is so… alone-sounding. I remember laughing with my buddy Kristoff Wennersten as we said “why they do me that way” along with Devin in the weird way that he says it. One thing that I notice makes for amazing rap music is the unique little vocal “moves” and stylistic choices that MCs make on a verse-by-verse basis. Devin the Dude is definitely one of those rappers who’s got that confidence, that laid-back swagger that makes his delivery and style so compelling. Plus, he’s got a sense of humor, which is something very refreshing to hear in hip-hop music.

8. Quicksand - David Bowie Before my sophomore year, I had never really experienced David Bowie. I knew who he was, I knew he was a famous musician, but I just never ran into him or sought out his music before. I come from a long line of contrarians, so if someone told me that I should listen to something, I wouldn’t. Bowie was one of those. But then I fell in love with a girl, and love makes you do things out of your comfort zone, and my girlfriend at the time showed me this song, and it quickly became one of my favorite songs of all time. I’m not usually a lyrics guy (more into the melodic and rhythmic content of a song, in general) but these lyrics are incredible to me. On the surface, the chorus line seems dreadfully bleak: “Don’t believe in yourself / don’t deceive with belief / knowledge comes with death’s release.” But I’ve never read them as bleak. To me, they are beautifully inspired and wise. To me, these words say: “It’s all going to be okay, everything will make sense in the end, no matter what you believe. You are loved.” I played this song at an open mic my senior year, and I was so nervous but I got through it and it turned out pretty great and people resonated with it. And my dear friend, and a dear friend to so many of us at Kenyon, Andrew Pochter, came up to me after the show beaming. “I loved that song!” he said with such beautiful enthusiasm that I would come to be quite familiar with as the year went on. It was one of the first things he ever said to me, and it’s a memory of him I will cherish forever. Andrew passed away in 2013. This song reminds me that music is not just a mere distraction from the pains of life. Music is a vehicle for human connection and community, uniting us in a common language of the heart that transcends death. Music helps us peer beyond the veil of annihilation and separation and discover that those who are no longer with us on this earthly plane are forever with us, always and forever. Music reminds us that life, no matter how it feels or looks in any given moment, is beautifully, incredibly, unbelievably worthwhile and precious.