This tribute is long overdue. “The Freshman” by The Verve Pipe is one of those songs that you either love or you hate. The song propelled The Verve Pipe into stardom and helped their album, Villains, go platinum. This was indeed their biggest hit and for good reason. I am a fan of a lot of their songs but this one is their best and has so much history for me personally. This is one of the first songs where I could sing every line word for word. It also came out at a time when I first started to follow mainstream music and began to listen to the radio quite frequently. I can still remember watching the video in my living room and hearing it countless times on the radio.
Although this song is about ten years old, I never get tired of hearing it. The song as well as the video is filled with such a powerful presence and emotion. I always found the lyrics confusing and didn’t find out what he wouldn’t “be held responsible for” but according to Wikipedia and other sources, the lead singer, Brian Vander Ark spilled the beans. He wrote the song in 1991 after he and his girlfriend had an abortion and later, broke up. The song does make mention of the girl committing suicide but according to Vander Ark, he was just using poetic license. For a line by line analysis by the lead singer himself, click here. Now for the haunting video, the one that was ingrained into my mind such a long time ago.