What Was Your Favorite Album in High School? — Senior Year

Ah, senior year.

If you’ll allow me to be sentimental, senior year was a really fun and memorable time. It was the first time in high school I allowed myself to actually enjoy the experience. I spent 3 years trying to figure out who I was, and even though I was still in a maximum cringe phase in my life, I was at peace with myself. Sure, I wanted to dress like an Urban Outfitters spokesperson and pontificate about cause and effect and the deeper intricacies of life, but I also enjoyed the ride that was senior year. For the first time in high school, I had fun.

I’ll spoil this bad boy and say my favorite album was The Adventures of Bobby Ray by B.O.B. This is nobody’s favorite album, and it shouldn’t be, but it invaded my ears at the exact time in my life that I needed it to. When I threw on the album and heard “Don’t Let Me Fall” for the first time, I felt a breadth of emotions that are still triggered today when I hear that opening piano riff.

Maybe it’s because it was warm outside when it came out that it spoke so much to me. Warm weather makes a difference when it comes to how music sounds and feels, that’s why a lot of rappers try to drop their projects in the summer. When you can ride with the windows down, blasting your favorite song while sipping on an Ocean Water from Sonic, the outside world shrinks to your orbit, nothing outside of it even existing. Somewhere across the world, kids are dying and war is happening, but right now you’re alone with your favorite artist in the planet and they made that album specifically for you. I love warm weather.

Our graduation song that year was “Airplanes” off the Bobby Ray album, and it was a massive hit the second it came out. Then you had “Lovelier Than You”, a perfect crooning ballad that filled the silence on those drives home from your significant other’s house. In high school you want to do cliché things like look at stars, share straws, go to the lake, bake a cake together, and watch movies until your eyes are burning out of your skull. And what better way to reflect on the night at 4 AM while driving home on the empty roads, quietly lit up by the stop lights and the glow from McDonald’s, than to sing along off pitch to your favorite love song. That song also appeared in my most favorite movie ever made, Just Go With It.

I’m married now, so that song means something else to me. It means a lot more to me. It’s still the song I go back to the most when I run through albums from my adolescence. If we had danced at our wedding instead of getting hammered and eating pizza all night, we would’ve danced to this song. I’m glad we ended up getting drunk and rowdy, I’m not a good dancer.

HONORABLE MENTION

So, my senior year wasn’t really an album heavy year for me. It can mostly be broken up in singles because I liked collages more than cohesiveness, so here are my favorite songs from that year:

OMG by Usher. This song still gives me chill bumps when it gets to the breakdown. Let me loooove you dooooooowwwwwnnnn.

Billionaire by Travie McCoy. I am a self proclaimed Gym Class Heroes stan. I think they made some of the best and most important music and it’s a shame they aren’t around anymore. I loved Travie’s solo shit.

Soul Sister by Train. This isn’t a good list so far, I know this.

I’m At War by Sean Kingston. I’m not sure if this came out my senior year, but that’s when I heard it.

Replay by Iyaz. There’s only so much one can say about Replay by Iyaz.