“Don’t worry, baby; don’t worry baby; everything will turn out alright,” the Beach Boys crooned as we drove down Route 13 to Stewart Park. He rolled the windows all the way down. We cranked the music louder. Nothing could touch us. We were invincible. The Beach Boys sang the song of our summer — one that held on to immense hope in a time of such uncertainty. We naively clung to the belief that the world wasn’t ending; that we weren’t ending.
The Beach Boys released “Don’t Worry Baby” in 1964, yet 56 years later, it was the song that I could never listen to enough. This song quickly climbed to the top of my most listened-to Spotify songs. We listened to it on every drive, on every hike, on every Dunkin’ run. I felt the dopamine surging through my brain upon simply hearing the opening drum beats and first falsetto chord. There was some indescribable quality of this song made me feel transcendent. Infinite, even. Even as a music psychologist, I failed to pin down why this song elicited such strong emotions in me. I had never loved a song so much.
Until the silence came. In the absence of music, what did I have? Brian Wilson and Roger Christian, how could you mock me, singing so carelessly that everything would be alright? How could they — how could I — be so ignorant? The music that once consumed me became a long, deafening silence that eventually crescendoed into commiserating with Morrissey’s dark, complex lyrics. June’s sweet summer melodies were far gone, for July brought nothing but songs drenched in misery yet abundant with emptiness. Summer came to an end; we came to an end; the Beach Boys came to an end. We go onwards, plummeting into Ithaca’s cold, gray winter once again.