Whether I’m walking along Market Street at 3am after the lights have turned on at the Union, or I’m peacefully sitting in my room with incense from Spoiled, there’s one common denominator: my “Liked Songs” from Spotify will always be shuffling.  

That doesn’t mean I listen to every song all the way through. I tend to skip songs that I’ve either played way too much in the last week, songs of genres I pretended to like two years ago, or any song my ex-flatmate suggested to me (sorry Finn).  

Occasionally though, a song will come on that I skip not out of distaste, but because I can’t handle the memories and emotions that come rushing back to me. I can’t help but stop and think about how different life used to be, back when I could listen to the song with ease. 

In June of 2018, I found out that my family was moving from the concrete jungle of New York to the watchmaking heaven of Geneva. When I found out, it felt like someone had turned off the city’s noise, and I wasn’t ready for silence. I was leaving the home I grew up with, the friends that had become family, and (I hate to admit it) leaving my favourite clothing shops like Bape and Supreme. 

At the time, I was a massive Juice WRLD fan (did the love of Bape not give that away?), and his song ‘Legends’ had just been released, a song about him navigating through a confusing and dark world. I loved it both for its meaning and its sound; it became the soundtrack of that summer and my most played song of 2018. Fast forward seven years, where not only has Juice WRLD tragically passed away, but I still miss New York. Whenever the song comes up on shuffle, my thumb hovers over the skip button for half a second, and before the first lyric even hits, I’ve already tapped it. If I listen to it, it overwhelms me with emotion, to a time when life was, ironically, a little less dark and confusing.  

By the time I finally returned to New York four years later, the playlist had changed, but not the way music had followed me through different chapters. This time, my family and I returned to visit other friends and relatives. One person I ended up seeing was my middle school crush, and although it sounds lame, when I saw her again my feelings for her rekindled. 

“Wow, she’s just perfect” I thought to myself. 

One of the ways our bond rejuvenated was through our shared love of Mac Miller. We kept coming back to his song ‘Woods’, a haunting track where Miller compares the gloomy forest to a fractured relationship, one where he feels lost and trapped. We loved it for its sound, but looking back, it revealed more about us than we realized: a quiet affection that couldn’t quite exist. 

I left New York that week feeling heavy, still looping the songs we’d shared. The more I listened to ‘Woods’, the more it became her voice echoing through my headphones.  

How do you love someone when you know you can’t stay? 

We’re both in happy relationships now, but that song still takes me back to the laughter, the late-night walks, the quiet smiles, and the feeling of almost.

Music holds the strange power to summon every version of who we’ve been. Sometimes, that’s beautiful. Other times, it’s almost too much to bear.