REMMERT: I hate “college”

I love college. I realize you might be confused, but bear with me. I’m not trying to make some grandiose claim that I can be contradictory and still brilliant (re: idiotic). I actually mean, in a very literal sense, that I hate ‘college’ as it is used in the context of the god-awful musical composition ‘I Love College’ by Asher Roth.

First off, let’s make one thing clear – Asher Roth’s ‘I Love College’ isn’t really music, it’s more of a mission statement than a song. It might as well be some drunken idiot sitting on a couch spitting a ridiculously bad rhyme alone at a crowded party (only in that version, nobody would be yelling ‘hey!’ like people do in Roth’s). The key difference between Roth and a drunken idiot (and I realize there probably is no general difference) is that Roth had the audacity to go to a record label executive and market his piece of dung as something ‘the kids will love.’ The worst part about this is – we do! Over the past two weeks, ‘I Love College’ has seeped into party after party, squirming into the spaces between drunken (re: failing) hookup conversation and that lame walk home. Sure, the lyrics are fairly true to life (I’m sure at one point I’ve ‘had this one girl completely naked’). It does relate to college kids, but not because it relates to the college experience. This song by Asher Roth (or, as I lovingly call him, ‘Mr. Worthless’) relates to college kids because it deals with the ‘college’ experience.

The idea of a shared experience is what makes music so accessible to millions of people; so why do I have a problem with Asher Roth giving the college kids of America their ‘shared experience’? Because it’s sad that our shared experience revolves around yelling ‘freshman,’ or ‘keg stand,’ or the intricacies of ‘beer pong.’ We like to preach to ourselves that we have an individual identity among this population, and yet when that snarky (re: terrible) beat comes on, suddenly we are all dumbed down into the lowest common denominator that shouldn’t, but does, have anything to do with the way we want to live our college lives. I’m not promoting abstinence or being a straight edge; I’m just saying it’s sad that the only thing most of us have in common is our wild love of alcohol, pot and naked girls. And I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t feel a sense of togetherness at times in our college lives. I’m just saying – can the song that makes us feel so united be a halfway decent one? I am a man of small needs.