I may love contemporary music, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the classics.
Pink Floyd once sang out to all who would listen, “Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.” A dystopian idea, yes, but it’s one that many people believe is relevant.
Students often feel this way about college. From the intimidating process of applications to the sometimes overwhelming task of planning your future, from classes and careers to finances, it’s easy for students to feel caught up in a complex machine that they didn’t read the manual for. I certainly didn’t.
The first song I stumbled upon channels students’ occasional feelings of helplessness and frustration.
“Big Time,” released by David Dallas in mid-December, is a swanky hip-hop song complete with some almost jazzy piano and some artificial trumpet sounds. Dallas raps about his own feelings of being a student caught up in the student loan process.
“Don’t fear if you ain’t got no money little Dave / Here’s a student loan form, you can sign your life away,” he raps about his own experience.
Is it a little overdramatized? Maybe, but have you ever heard of a popular hip-hop song that talks about student loans? Me neither. Dallas is so frustrated by his lack of control over the finances of his education that he’s compelled to write about it.
One student who identifies with that frustration is Eric Anguiano, a first-year political science student.
“It’s hard thinking, “˜OK, yeah, I’m just going to take this money out now.’ … What about later on, how’s it going to mess me up later?” he said.
The next step to understanding any massive, scary machine is to slow things down a bit.
Such are the feelings of Great Lake Swimmers, who recently released a deluxe edition of their album titled “Lost Channels” in mid-December. On this album is the next song I look to: “Everything is Moving So Fast.”
The song is easygoing. The music itself, composed primarily of warm acoustic guitar, is relaxing and essentially serves as a rebuttal to the “everything” that is “moving so fast” in the title of the song.
The song addresses the speed at which some things in life seem to fly by with a rhetorical question: “What does it feel like to fall / In slow motion, despite it all?” To slow things down, to go through life in slow motion, is a luxury that few people can afford in today’s go-go-go atmosphere.
Though the lyrics themselves question more than provide definitive statements, they give a glimpse into what is needed to get a handhold on the ever-evolving and running machine that is the life of a college student.
Try as we might to slow things down, there are times when we get swept up by the current of our busy schedules in spite of ourselves. And when that happens, there’s only one place to turn: a staple of ’80s music, still going strong and producing new music.
I’m talking, of course, of Duran Duran, which released its new album titled “All You Need Is Now” in late December. I looked at “All You Need Is Now,” the title track of the album.
The song’s title sends a simple message in itself. That is, live in the present, not years and years in the future. Now, on to the meat of the song.
It’s pure ’80s fun. Soaring synthesizers and funky beats provide the base for some feel-good lyrics that are surprisingly powerful.
The song sends a message that many of us would do well to listen to: “Everybody’s gunning / For the VIP section / But you’re better up and running / In another direction.”
Tell it like it is, Duran Duran. In the end, the best goals to have are your own, even if they don’t end up with you sitting on plush couches in the fabled VIP sections of lore. Sometimes, you just have to tinker with the machine a little bit.
If you’ve read and understood the manual to life or have an issue you think a few songs could address, e-mail Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu. “Single-Minded” runs every Friday.