MICHAEL HOLCOMB
I recently read about one man’s transition into society after several decades of imprisonment. When he went to downtown Manhattan, he thought that people with white earbuds must be part of a government conspiracy driven by new technology—either spies or brainwashed robots. To an outsider of the 21st century, the prospect of carrying a personal library of sound with you everywhere and anywhere is certainly daunting. Taking a step back and looking around our campus, a remarkable number of people walk around listening to music here, too. As someone who spends a fair deal of time listening to or thinking about music, it strikes me that many people find it important enough to constantly have music playing in their lives. With this, I have always wondered: what are those people listening to? I decided to find out, stopping people around campus to ask what song they were currently playing. The results were strikingly diverse: no song repeated and genres spanned from Christian music to dancehall to hard rock and most everywhere in between. It showed that no matter the range of music I think I’ve discovered from writing this column for the past year-and-a-half, there is always more out there. Below are my results, the fifteen songs I found people listening to on campus:
Alt-J: “Fitzpleasure”
“Into the Woods,” title track from the musical
Bynon and Bishøp: “Hey Hey”
Depeche Mode: “Enjoy the Silence”
Dispatch: “The General”
Israel Houghton: “Jesus at the Center”
“A Million Miles Away,” from the musical Aladdin
J. Cole: “Wet Dreamz”
DJ Snake ft. Bipolar Sunshine: “Middle”
Moth: “Hellyeah”
Taylor Swift: “Welcome to New York”
Aidonia: “Nuh Boring Gyal”
Pixies: “Debaser”
Future: “Purple Reign”
Fun: “The Gambler”
Photograph by Keyon Aghajan
UF PRISM 