With GUSA season well under way, I’m personally exhausted by campaign platitudes and promises. Abolish GUSA flyers litter Red Square, and dissatisfaction and mistrust seem to be at a peak across campus. In all seriousness, it’s important to vote in the GUSA election because no change will happen at all unless students start to care more about who we elect to represent us. But at the moment, I kinda just feel like watching the world burn while scream-singing at the top of my lungs a little bit. So here’s a fun, destruction-related playlist to help you vent all your GUSA frustrations before you vote on Friday!
1) “Burning Down the House” by The Talking Heads
The sufficiently bizarre vibe of The Talking Heads is the perfect way to kick off this playlist. This song is an anthem for ordinary guys just looking to burn down some houses. But what truly captures the relevance of this song is one of the last lines: “No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin’ yet.”
2) “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel
This song also ties into the fire sub-theme, but at least here the narrator denies responsibility, kinda like some GUSA candidates have been doing “since the world’s been turning!” Joel’s list lyrics remind me of when candidates try to name specific student groups to show they recognize their issues without actually explaining those issues, leaving audiences wondering, “Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball, Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide” ???
3) “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen
This campus seems to be full of people who were “born to run,” whether that be for GUSA or Congress. On the other hand, I feel more like running in the opposite direction.
4) “On the Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire
A song about an impending apocalypse. Seems fitting. This song speaks to the frustration of hoping every single year that things will be different, that change will actually happen, only to be disappointed yet again: “Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’, I’m sittin’ here, just contemplatin,’ I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation, Handful of senators don’t pass legislation.”
5) “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones
In a similar vein, “I try and I try and I try and I try,” but I can’t get no satisfaction. “Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak?”
6) “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye
The lyrics of this song speak to the societal unrest and injustice of the time in which it came out. But it also articulates my genuine confusion with the past year in GUSA. What on earth is going on? We’ve really “got to find a way to bring some understanding here today.”
7) “I Want to be Sedated” by The Ramones
But until then…
And “hurry hurry hurry, before I go insane.”
8) “thank u, next” by Ariana Grande
This one speaks for itself. Friday, come sooner.
