As the days go by for us seniors, the glorious day of graduation is nearly upon us. It’s a special day, one that speaks to the soul of everything we’ve been through and accomplished. What else speaks to the soul? Music. Nothing goes together quite like the feeling of achieving something we’ve worked 13 years to achieve and musical notes that bring us to a higher level of bliss. That is why I am here to recommend 3 different songs that can coincide perfectly with the bittersweet, glorious feelings that come from graduating from high school.

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears

This song encapsulates in its entirety the importance of appreciating the gift that is life. “Welcome to your life, there’s no turning back.” We can only keep marching forward and experiencing everything as it happens. In some ways, graduating high school is when life truly begins. The gift of life allows us to be free, to choose how our life will play out. That is what this song wants us to understand. Life is too short to spend in a way that we didn’t choose, so we need to make the most of the gifts that life gives us. One of those gifts, of course, is freedom. “Help me make the most of freedom, and of pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever.”

“All Star” by Smash Mouth

Alright, this song has been played to absolute death. We’ve all heard it so many times that it’s permanently stuck in our heads. However, this song is an important one in this context. Much like the previous song, it talks about life as a whole, but focuses more so on the hardships of life and what it means to overcome them. Life is filled with so many wonderful things to see and do, but at the same time it only gets harder once we finish high school. The years start coming, as the song says, and they don’t stop coming. But despite all the difficulties that life presents us with, never once will the importance of living begin to wane. We all have a reason to live, and that reason is what we’ll inevitably base our lives around once we graduate high school and go into the real world.

“You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

This song literally has “don’t give up, you’ve got a reason to live” as part of the chorus. It’s the perfect motivation for one to live their best life in face of all that comes their way. And the phrase “you get what you give” can be applied to many things. In life, we’ll only achieve whatever we put our mind and effort into. We can’t give up or belittle the importance of our ambitions, because otherwise we’ll never reach them. In other words, we’ll only receive that which we give an equal amount for. In a cruel world where it can be difficult to stand tall in the face of adversity, this song reminds us that there’s always a reason to keep going. And as stated earlier, once we graduate high school, our lives will truly begin. This song encapsulates the determination of working in our adult lives to reach that which we’ve dreamed of.

Honorable mention-The Full “Graduation” album by Kanye West

Nothing to say here. This one’s a given.

At the end of the day, music speaks to everyone differently. What one may consider to be an all time generation-defining classic, another may consider to be generic and uninspiring. Music’s sheer level of subjectivity is proof of its existence as an art form, and few musical pieces have a true, fully objective interpretation of it. However, everyone can have something positive to gain from listening to music with a theme that fits best with their circumstances. That is the essence of these songs-the importance of living life the best way possible once one is finally released from high school and into the great, wide world. The greatest gift from the Lord above that we’ve all been given is the gift of life. The only appropriate way to live life is to live it however we choose for ourselves, all in order to accomplish our ambitions, be happy, and leave the world better than we found it