Yesterday is a headspace that music often takes us back to; a wishful longing for a time from the past, certain tracks have the quality of taking the listener back in time and space. Coupled with a warm side of nostalgia, we’ve set out to look at how context and memory can shape a musical experience. And we’ll try and do so by bringing you along with our own.

In the summer of 2019, there was a small apartment in a renovated townhouse, located amid an old industrial rock and mineral exporting neighborhood in Long Island City, Queens. We called that space home. Every day during the summer, we would ride CitiBikes back from work, racing against the quickly setting sun. We’d rush home, swapping our bags for our Bluetooth speakers and heading up to the rooftop. We’d sit and smoke away, with not a rush in the world, patiently listening to our music as we watched the crimson sun settle behind the Manhattan skyline. Our dear friend and fine-music connoisseur, Zachary, would sometimes pair these sunset experiences with some of his own sounds, and Andrew Bird was one virtuoso. The violin flowed with the comfort of the orange skyline turning blue.

Image Courtesy of Aravind Kumar

The picks jumped around like the juggling balls we were trying to master. Once every blue moon, there is a song that brings absolute silence to the group. Lazuli Bunting was that song for the entire summer. Like the bird itself, the song served as a journey and a consistent reminder of comfort and life’s inherent simplicity. And after a long day of work in Manhattan, that’s just what we needed. This song of yesterday now serves a new purpose, a reminder to take a breath and fly with the lazuli bunting.

And then there are songs that already have a place in your past, but are reformed by a collective memory with your friends. In Berlin, during the summer of 2018, our apartment was absurd but beautiful – a lot like Berlin nightlife. The foyer led up to the open kitchen, which opened up to a small balcony. Aravind would return from work on the yellow tram, walk up to the Vietnamese bakery opposite our balcony and peep over to our first-floor apartment. Reema would catch his eye over the window and call out to get a freshly squeezed OJ. Much like our time on our rooftop in Queens, we found ourselves on this balcony perhaps too often, watching Berlin move forward without us down below. Fresh off of the release of Gorillaz’s album The Now Now, one of us played On Melancholy Hill, a track known to us all. But here we were, on our sometimes melancholic balcony, dancing and smiling to it as if it had just dropped. These new contexts and memories attached themselves to the song as smoothly as the synth attached itself to the rhythm, changing the song’s structure and meaning to bring us back to that scary and wonderful place of adolescence in our first true experience of independence.

In the spring of 2016, two first-years with very different tastes in music met through some sort of event. We’d met a couple of months ago but still didn’t quite know each other. Our favorite second-years at the time invited us over to A5B, a far trek from our homes in A2. The room was full of life – complete with IKEA-bought fairy lights, a wall with vinyl covers and friends who loved the high of music. At the center of worship was a speaker, affectionately named Tina. Walking up the third floor corridor on a Thursday night, our freshmen ears were usually lured in by Tina’s thumping bass. But ever so often Tina would wind down a notch as we played Drake’s Take Care. And that was enough to start bonding along the lines of Marvin’s Room. With Aravind by the window and Reema by the couch, we’d flail and sling our arms trying to rap along with Drake about missing the exes we didn’t have. The sadness that comes from the classic Drake break-up song immediately proposes a nostalgia that changed into a more shared experience. Yesterday’s songs of depression have now taken a new meaning and light, from the song you play after a rough breakup to the song you play to laugh at and appreciate your own dramatism from the comfort and safety of today.

Image Courtesy of Aravind Kumar

Earwormz’ songs of Yesterday: