Popular music has a persistent habit of treating the self as an unfinished sentence, as if it's constantly waiting for a second clause to complete it. That is…
Popular music has a persistent habit of treating the self as an unfinished sentence, as if it's constantly waiting for a second clause to complete it. That is to say, playlists are built around the concept of connection, as if a life only counts for a story if there's a second chair across the table. Solitude, as an idea or a reality, is treated as a prelude to love or the wreckage over it.
We walk to class alone, eat between lectures alone; often, we also make our most defining decisions alone. For something so central and ordinary to experience, we have surprisingly minimal music that takes it seriously. Fall is the season that makes this omission hard to ignore. The rhythms of summer are gone and the breeze of winter is yet to set in. Through such transition, we realise that the only thing that remains is in fact, the self.
The songs below are anthems for that choice: about treating the 'table for one' as a place a person can comfortably live, about individuality being a source of freedom rather than a restriction. 1. Taylor Swift: "You're On Your Own, Kid" This is the song that starts the playlist for me. It opens with a summer crush that leads to nowhere, then traces the transition of seasons, practically acting as a fall anthem.
The song allows you to realize that the person you were waiting for was you all along. An ideal soundtrack for a solo walk by the Slope during sunset. 2. Noah Kahan: "You're Gonna Go Far" Gentle and acoustic, this one sounds like a conversation with someone who believed in you before you did. Kahan has a way to make soft, slow songs feel like a letter from someone who never doubted you. 3.
Bob Dylan: "Like a Rolling Stone" If Kahan makes music seem like a hand on your shoulder, Dylan makes them like a shove. Talking about a previously comfortable life falling apart, it portrays the idea of finding your own footing as something oddly freeing; it's mildly cruel, yet few songs capture a transition as well as this one. 4.
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