I have been feeling very nostalgic recently, and it is definitely because I’ll be graduating in a week and a half. Feeling nostalgic is bittersweet. While I do love being reminded of my childhood, it’s just sad to think that I’ll never be nine years old again, lying on the floor of my older brother’s room, playing Miniclip games, and listening to music. Don’t get me wrong, being able to drive and vote is super cool, but I’d just love to be a kid again. 

Since I have been feeling so nostalgic, I’ve been listening to a playlist that has all of the K-pop songs I listened to when I was younger. Music can be a powerful tool to evoke feelings of nostalgia, and it’s not just me saying that. According to the University of Chicago, music has the ability to transport people to the past and awaken emotions associated with the past.

The playlist is around three hours long, which is perfect for when I want to wallow in my nostalgia. There are a few songs I like to listen to when I want to be hit with a truckload of nostalgia:

“A” by GOT7

I was quite literally obsessed with this song when it was released in 2014. I probably watched the music video once a day. I watched it so many times that I could replay it scene by scene in my head. Honestly, the song still sounds the same; it is still as good as I remember it to be. Whenever I had more than three minutes of free time, I would pull this song up. In fact, I have memories of this song playing in the background as I waited for my brothers’s Yu-Gi-Oh match to finish so I could play a round.

“BANG BANG BANG” BY BIGBANG

“BANG BANG BANG” was a song released in 2016, and if I had no childhood connection to this song, I would not listen to this. Currently, I enjoy more soft sounding songs, so this song is a bit too influenced by electro-pop and trap for my taste, but it’s one of their most popular songs for a reason. The song currently has about 234 million streams (a few hundred of those are definitely from me and my brothers, with how often we would play this after school).

“Gee” by Girls’ Generation

This was and still is a very classic song. It was released in 2009 as part of their album titled Oh!. When Girls’ Generation released this song, it was an automatic hit, and it still remains their most popular song, sitting at about 83 million streams. Just like the song “A,” I was a chronic watcher of this song’s music video. 

“heart” IU

This song was released in 2015, so I wasn’t lying when I said that I’d been listening to IU for years. Compared to her other songs, this song is very ordinary. This song is just her voice over a simple acoustic guitar instrumental, but the simplicity of the song makes it a very calming song to listen to. “heart” was one of my favorite IU songs at the time, so I have very vivid memories of listening to this song while I sat in the backseat of my grandpa’s blue 2010 Hyundai.

“Sorry, Sorry” by Super Junior

It would be a crime if I didn’t include this song in my list. If I had to define the late 2000s with a song, it would be this one. This was another favorite song of mine and my brothers’. Even now, my older brother will play this song on family drives.