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Devilish Flow

Rock 'n' roll, no halo

By Jas DentPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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I wanted to write about a song that's clearly meaningful. A song like 'What a Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong, which I can't listen to without thinking about my late Great Grandmother, or 'Brown Eyed Girl' by Van Morrison, which my father sang to me every night when I was little. They're well known and hold the right kind of warm nostalgia that I think would work well for this prompt.

At the same time though, I want to be truly honest, because without that honesty I can't properly convey to you how I felt or who I am. The song is not traditionally a song someone would write about fondly, what with it's commercial success and popularity, but I think it's just as equally important.

I was thirteen when LMFAO released their number one hit, 'Party Rock Anthem'. I was in year 7 and very excitable, as all thirteen year olds are, and so the first time I heard it, it felt like someone had injected The Need to Party directly into my veins. I was on my hour long bus ride home, as were about 30 other kids, a lot of who had heard the song before. When it's opening drum beat began, a majority of my classmates, who had previously been stewing in bus ride boredom, for lack of a better word, exploded.

Normally it would take me a couple of listens to decide if I liked a song or not, but in that moment, it took no time at all. It wasn't necessarily about the melody or the beat or the words, although they helped; it was more about the chaos it created and the way my previously quiet peers reacted. I don't think I'd have loved the song as much if not for them, because when something like that makes the people around you so obviously happy, it's hard not to appreciate it.

We were all suddenly one group, defying the unspoken rules of year level and gender, and also defying the rules about wearing your seatbelt and not standing in a moving vehicle. Before, we were school kids, uninterested and quiet, and then all at once we were a bunch of ravers with an average age of fourteen, trapped inside a school bus. I'd never been so suddenly inducted into something before, and it felt brilliant.

It was as though it went on forever, and when it finished the energy in all of us was different, and certainly better. That day, I stumbled off the bus with a contact high and what must have been a very large grin. It was one of the best afternoons of my life.

After that, I heard the song just about every day for weeks. It was a phenomenon, and it swept through my small rural school with vigor. When the Year 7 dance came around, it was played more than once. Every thirteen year old there, already high on Cola and the thought of dancing with the opposite gender went a bit extra loopy. It the perfect song for the night, pairing well with the glowsticks and the candy we were gorging ourselves on. Even the seventeen year olds who had been roped into DJ-ing the event loved it. I don't think I ever got tired of it, just because of how deliriously delighted it made not only me but everyone around me, as if it were a excitement infection spread by Redfoo's dulcet tones.

When I hear it now, I get a lovely rush of childhood nostalgia. Nostalgia for a time when a single song was all it took for everyone in listening vicinity to go completely wild, nostalgia for a time when shuffling was immensely popular and shutter shades were all the rage. It made my thirteenth year incredible and crazy, and for that I am grateful.

dance
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