Having been in St Andrews for three and half years, I struggle to walk anywhere around the town without being reminded of experiences or conversations as I go along. The same can be said for music, just like how you can associate a certain song with a particular time in your life, some songs for me are now, in my mind at least, linked with places in this town. Some of these songs I still love, and others I would never listen to again, but for one reason or another they’ve stuck around in my mind. Here are a few of those tracks, and some haphazard explanations why I relate them to certain places around St Andrews.

 

University Hall – “Rad Pitt” by Egyptian Hip Hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH2KqetRVlk

 

As a much skinnier and more confident Fresher who thought he had the whole ‘university’ thing sorted, I arrived at Uni Hall in a denim jacket and with the same ten ‘Gap Yah’ stories that I told to everyone. Clearly fancying myself as a bit of a musical guru, I would rigidly impose my musical regime upon anyone unfortunate enough to be near me. This track, ‘Rad Pitt’ was my go-to song at this point in my life, and I can’t really imagine sitting in the corridor, sipping a Tennant’s before a Tuesday night in the Union, without this song as the background. The upbeat indie-pop fuelled my bad decisions, and even though I never really knew the words I would still try and fail to sing along every time.

 

Lamond Drive – “Warning” by Cymbals Eat Guitars / “Africa” by Toto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nFHXNN_dzk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY

 

All of us, at some point, have spent some time in the Badlands. For those lucky/rich few, it’s just trekking out to a party or two, or having a little adventure to M&S, whilst others live there for years. I spent a single year living on Lamond Drive, which I remember in little bursts like war flashbacks, even though it definitely wasn’t that bad. I have two overriding memories of my time on Lamond Drive. One was my flatmate and I refusing to leave our house to go meet friends because we were too busy singing along to ‘Africa’ and jumping on furniture. The other is walking down Lamond Drive for what seemed like 4 hours, because that road is like purgatory, and measuring how long it took by listening to ‘Warning’ on repeat and counting how many times the song played until I got to the end. It was 3 ½ Warning’s.

 

The Pier – “Bridge Burn” by Little Comets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOWXfJIEYk

 

During a recent moment of melancholy, I walked around St Andrews in that moody way characters in TV dramas do when they’re sad or contemplative. I ended up standing on the Pier, staring out into the sea, battered by the wind and listening to some Spotify playlist that had come up automatically. I thought that I was being really deep, like some Skins character facing an emotional decision, before realising how ridiculous I looked. Anyway, in that little imaginary moment this song seemed like the sort of soundtrack the bad TV drama of my life would have used, and now I can’t get on the pier without thinking about when I thought I was like some wind-swept Scandinavian detective or something like that. It’s not even a great song.

 

The Library – “Rafael” by Beatenberg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJtdeP6siJ0

 

I don’t know if other people have ‘study albums’, but I have some specific albums that I find have the perfect tone for studying, especially in those long library days. The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg is one such album. It’s subtle and low-key enough that it can be ignored when you’re really focusing, upbeat enough to set a productive tone, and has some sing-along moments that make the work vaguely bearable. ‘Rafael’ is the opening track, and besides being a great tune, it always sets me in the mind to work, because it means I’ve put on a study album.

 

Brew Co. – “The Blues Are Still Blue” by Belle & Sebastian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQwcqwHvrus

 

I don’t know if they still use SONOS is Brew Co., but there were a couple of weeks where they definitely did, and they had the sound system hooked up to the Wi-Fi where anyone with the SONOS app could access it. I spent a couple of glorious nights hijacking the playlist for the entire pub with Belle & Sebastian songs. This was my number one pick, because I’d just heard this at the time, and now to me it’s forever associated with Brew Co. They clearly didn’t like it, because they took the sound system off the public Wi-Fi.

 

Leuchars Railway Station – “Omega Grey” by Childcare

https://soundcloud.com/childcare/omega-grey-1

 

This song has nothing to do with trains or anything like that. I just heard it on Leuchars’ platform for the first time and now it’s forever a train station song. It kind of spoils it.

 

 

These songs are all attached, in my mind at least, with these places and I don’t know if that’ll ever change. They’re not my favourite songs, and I don’t hate them, but they all evoke memories of places in St Andrews, which I think lends them significance regardless of whether I like the music or not, because they let me remember events and emotions I might otherwise have forgotten. I could be weird in thinking like this, but there are so many songs that have specific memories for me, and these are a few which sprang to mind when I tried to think about St Andrews.

Ben Ashbridge