Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.
Today is the graduation ceremony for the Royal Holloway, University of London English Department finalists, so I thought I’d salute my students with “Graduation Day” by John P. Strohm.
I reviewed the album Everyday Life for the Philler a while back. Like pretty much the rest of the album, “Graduation Day” is wistful, clever, charming, straight-up guitar pop. There’s something in the way the music and enunciation converge on the word “tragedy” that sums up what I like about the song, and indeed, the album: the tragedy of the fading summer and lost love somehow haven’t changed twenty years later, but the irony has crept into that word all the same.
