Column: Four years in four albums

Music is never just background noise; it’s ingrained into our selfhood. We segment our lives by the music we consumed at particular ages and associate places with the artists we loved there. Our music can bond us, our collective attempts to dougie as high school seniors cementing our generational ethos.

Any reflection on my college experience requires a discussion of the songs, artists and albums I’ve loved over each of the past four years. Listening to these albums is hearing myself, hearing my mistakes and triumphs while reveling in the greatness of youth.

Freshman year: “Wasting Light” by Foo Fighters. In my senior high school profile for The Fayetteville Observer, I listed Dave Grohl as my personal hero. My attempt to buck the accepted “Oprah”
and “Jesus” trend reveals an adolescent fixation with long-haired dudes and loud guitars.

All my idols were men: outspoken, sensitive and physical. This obsession was frustrating, though, and craved diversity, complication. College granted me space and time to deviate.

Sophomore year: “The Only Place” by Best Coast. I spent summer 2012 working at a campground in Michigan. The 13 weeks were filled with bonfires, jumbo-sized marshmallows and buckets of Rit dye. Abounding with references to sun and waves, “The Only Place” is a definite summer album but one that considers self-loathing and growth.

Michigan was my first extended, independent travel experience. Apart from my family and familiar settings, I was able to question my purpose and ambitions.

Junior year: “AM” by Arctic Monkeys. Though “Yeezus” and “Nothing Was the Same” are probably my favorite albums of 2013, I link “AM” with my study abroad, the definite apex of my undergraduate career.

I saw “AM” before I heard it; the minimal black/white album cover flanked the walls of the London Underground, begging my attention. The sneer, the attitude — it’s all very British. The Arctic Monkeys are like a millennial Oasis: melodic, snide and incomparably cool. I’ll always associate “AM” with Camden, my black leather boots and the countless well-coiffed Brits I envied on my commute.

Senior year: “2014 Forest Hills Drive,” J. Cole. If the Arctic Monkeys are undoubtedly England, J. Cole is unashamedly Fayetteville. “2014 Forest Hills Drive” is a return to Cole’s roots, a rejection of any commercialized, Hollywood self.

In “A Tale of 2 Citiez,” Cole juxtaposes two distinct sides of Fayetteville as an allegory for simultaneous ambition and apathy: “Last night I had a bad dream/ That I was trapped in this city/ Then I asked is that really such a bad thing?” I couldn’t articulate my relationship with Fayetteville any better.

I mark the Fayetteville roads by the music I blared through my six-disc in high school, the Nirvana I felt was exclusively mine. Chapel Hill is a different space, one I often despised for its congestion and elevated sense of worth. But when I find a Drake album in 2025, I’ll remember Carolina fondly.