Nostalgia: Freshers 2012

Taking a short trip down memory lane, or perhaps, due to the obscene amount of alcohol consumed ‘lack-of-memory’ lane, I arrive at my first crazy week of student life, where musical sophistication was the last thing on my mind.

‘Gangnam Style’ was the glue that bonded us together throughout our first nights, no matter where we were or what we were getting up to, when the catchy Korean song blasted out of the speakers, all of us Freshers congregated on the dance floor to groove along to Gangnam! The unique dance moves appeared to become a temporary element of Freshers courtship behavior; each time it was played new couples formed, now quite literally stuck together.

Towards the end of Freshers fortnight I was sitting with my friend in a computer room at uni, when a message popped up on Facebook asking if I was still okay to interview the Loveable Rogues at the Freshers Ball that night. Now clearly this was another drunken mistake or a so called ‘frape’. To this day I have absolutely no recollection of writing on The Edge Facebook page offering to do this, nevertheless I accepted the task in hand and made a start researching the tantalizing trio on Youtube. ‘Lovesick’, their Britain’s got Talent audition song proved to be fairly fascinating for myself and my friend and we soon had its hilarious lyrics, focused somewhat on food, stuck in our heads and felt the need to have the lyric video on repeat for the rest of the afternoon! Thankfully, the interview went smoothly and ‘Lovesick’ will never fail to bring a smile to my face reminding me of my freshers ball for years to come.

As the partying eventually subsided I was appreciative to have the excuse of a 6am row to stay in at night. However, falling asleep at a reasonable time proved to be a quite a challenge due to my newly messed up body clock. This is where Atlas Genius, an indie rock band from South Australia comes into my story. A tranquil song, ‘Trojans (Crown City Acoustic)’ taken from their debut EP, Through The Glass, lulled me into my much needed sleep in the countless nights following freshers fortnight.

Perhaps next year, as the work gets more intense, darker songs will be needed to sum up semester 1, but for this year, these relatively easy-listening songs are wholly representative of my first term at Southampton.