I never listened to music critically until I was 17 or 18, when I first bought a car and realized that it was up to me — not the bus driver, my parents, or the radio — to determin what I listened to when I was alone in the car. I had never tapped too much into the music listening experience, but between my high school graduation and when COVID became manageable enough to warrant sending people back to the classroom — my sophomore year at MSU — my exposure to music went from a trickle of the mainstream to an open-minded embrace of whatever sounded like a good listen. This meant that by the time I stepped foot onto campus as a student for the first time in the fall of 2021, I was finally ready to embrace music.

Since starting to really enjoy music as an art form, I’ve always associated songs with the locations that I best remember listening to them in. The three-hour drive between my hometown, Traverse City, and Lansing is littered with memories of my first listens to what now are my favorite songs, albums and artists. There’s a stretch of M-115 that driving through brings me right back to my first listen of Lil Yachty’s “Let’s Start Here.” There’s a misty back road just east of Traverse City that snaps me back to my first listen of Daft Punk’s “Discovery.” There’s an overpass on 127 South that conjures Biggie Smalls, a corn field that suggests both Tyler’s “IGOR” and Bjork’s “Debut” and a hill in Traverse City that makes me feel like a sophomore listening to the ending monologue of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly” for the first time.

In Lansing, there are locations that elicit the same effect for me. There are also smells, temperatures, ambiances and sounds that do the same. Music is such a sensory experience for me, that having lived in Lansing for the last three years has forever altered my perception of this town. I can’t go anywhere without the memory of a song or album from my past worming its way into my head.

This playlist is a testament to that. For each of these songs, I have a specific MSU-related place in my heart. “Complexion” by Kendrick is always going to make me think of northeast campus on Hagadorn. Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” and Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” will forevermore remind me of tearing around the map of Forza Horizon 4 in my favorite Corvette at my sophomore year apartment. Spelling’s “Little Deer” will always conjure the chilly fall 2021 I spent driving to visit my girlfriend at Olivet College south of Lansing. A hundred songs will always represent different seasons and colors and feelings bicycling up and down Abbot road to class five days a week for two years straight. I’ll always remember how funny I found it that Primus’s “Lee Van Cleef” was the tune playing when I was nailed by a car biking home from class during my junior year.

I’ll also always remember songs by the people I enjoyed them with: Mac Demarco with my girlfriend on Grand River ave, Vulfpeck with my family on Kalamazoo street, Tyler, the Creator on my way to Detroit with a friend and Gorillaz all over town with all manner of friends, roommates and associates.

I hope this playlist does justice to my experience at MSU. It’ll always mean everything to me, just like my time at college will.

Goodbye and thank you, MSU,

Jeremiah Dungjen