eighteen [playlist]

[ shoegaze, britpop, dreampop ]

one year in high school, my best friend returned after summer vacation and told me about a new app she had downloaded— tinder— and how she had gone to the movies with a guy she had met on there. she sounded so adult, so scandalous. like she had come back from break having experienced some life-changing, coming-of-age summer, and all i had done was reblog shit on tumblr until 3 am each night. i downloaded tinder later that night. almost immediately, i matched with him. tinder messages turn into snapchat photos, which turn into nightly skype calls. i asked him what his favorite song was. he pressed play and told me, “if you know this song, i love you.” an eerie, fuzzy, distorted tune started playing through the speakers— a type of music that i never quite heard before. “what song is this?” i asked. four words that changed my life.

this is how i discovered shoegaze.

the first two quarters of college were pretty isolating for me.

i didn’t have friends for a while. i really liked my roommate, and i was introduced to her friend group, but it soon became apparent that her friends and i didn’t share the same values. it was (and still is) impossible for me to spend time with people i feel that way about. i’ve always been this way— but i’d rather spend my time alone than with people i don’t care for. i never minded being alone. i love being alone. so instead of eating with their group, i often opted to sit in the dining hall by myself. i’d put my headphones on and listen to music or watch videos on my phone. i recall one lunchtime sitting in DLG, eating lunch and watching pitchfork’s documentary on slowdive. santa barbara always had perfect weather and most evenings, i’d walk around the lagoon listening to lush, who were just about to release new music for the first time in 20 years.

even as a college freshman, i didn’t partake in partying or drinking, so i would spend all my time listening to music, watching music documentaries, and reading about music. at this time, i was mostly drawn to 80s-90s britpop and shoegaze scenes in the UK. i spent a lot of evenings at my school’s library, searching for books that had to do with 90s rock history. i didn’t know anyone who listened to the same music as me besides my ex-boyfriend and some mutuals on tumblr. so i kept my passions inside, and for the first 6 months of my ‘adult’ life, music was my closest friend.

somehow, i saw a flyer about getting involved with the community radio station. i went to their info session and immediately realized that it was something i was very passionate about. to get my own radio show, i had to undergo an application and quarter-long training process. i pitched a shoegaze and dream-pop centered show called “cherry coloured funk” after the cocteau twins song. they accepted my application, and within weeks i was getting lost in the radio station’s physical music library, hand-picking obscure 90s records and cds that i’d never seen before. i was playing the music i liked and shyly talking on the radio, mixing up song names with band names because of how nervous i was.

after that, most of the friends i made throughout the next 3 years of college were because of the radio station. so shoegaze was my only friend for a while, and then it gave me all my friends. it sounds kind of lame, typing it like that.

this playlist is a collection of songs i would listen to when i was 18 years old in my dorm room and more. enjoy. <3