I believe everyone has a song that holds more than just a tune and some lyrics— a song that carries pieces of who they used to be.

For me, that song was “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers.

I remember the first time I heard the lyrics “Comin’ out of my cage and I’ve been doin’ just fine.” I was 8 years old, slouched in the backseat of our black Ford Explorer on the way to visit my grandparents in Quincy, IL. My dad drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, singing along with a kind of uninhibited joy that could not be put into words, while I carried his tune with my professional air guitar strumming. I think it was the most carefree I had ever seen my dad. I know it was the most carefree I had ever been.

But, like all good things, the song ends and the upbeat alternative rock tune gets drowned out by a twisted mashup called reality.

Just a few years later, my reality was my parents’ divorce. I was no longer just “Swimming in sick lullabies” anymore, I was submerged in them, listening as my mom quietly confirmed that our family would never look the same again. I cried not just for the changes to come, but for the realization that the simplicity I once revered was suddenly gone.

That fracture followed me into the ordinary spaces in my life. A week later, when my fifth grade teacher played “Mr. Brightside” in class, the opening chords felt almost cruel. I slipped out quietly and locked myself in a bathroom stall, trying to understand how something that once made me feel so alive could now make my chest ache.

So, over time, I stopped trying to embrace “Mr. Brightside” as part of me. I let the song drift out of my life, avoiding it in the way we avoid things that hurt too much to face directly. Without realizing, I began to forget the song; first the lyrics and soon the melody. It became background noise to a version of myself I thought I had outgrown.

During my freshman year, The Killers found me again.

After hearing that a family friend would be attending the University of Michigan (U-Mich) in the fall, I grew curious. I looked up the university on TikTok and the first video that appeared was a montage of Ann Arbor: crowded streets, people decked out in maize and blue, the Big House towering in the distance. And underneath it all, unmistakenly, was “Mr. Brightside.”

Without realizing it, I let myself fall back into the catchy tune I loved so dearly. Somewhere along the way, I began to tie that feeling to U-Mich itself.

That uncertain curiosity grew into something much larger. By senior year, the Common App loomed over me like a storm I could not outrun. My U-Mich supplements became an obsession; draft after draft, each sentence pulled apart and rebuilt, each word carrying the weight of the last 17 years of my life. For those first few months of senior year, “Mr. Brightside” played on repeat:
on car rides, in my room, through my headphones. It became less of a superstition and more of a ritual, as if the song that had seen so many versions of me could somehow guide me into the next one.

On January 28, I became a Wolverine. That afternoon, all of the tangled meanings that the song had carried- joy, grief, confusion- settled into something more clear. For the first time since I was 8 years old, I really did feel like “I’ve been doin’ just fine.”

Now, when I hear the opening lines, I am no longer just the kid in the backseat, or the girl in the bathroom stall crying, or the anxious senior refreshing her portal. I am all of them at once. The song has never changed since its release, but I have. That is why I believe certain songs stay with us.

Not because they always make us feel the same way, but because they remind us that we are bound to change.