I have a confession to make. I think I may have downloaded Tatu’s “All the Things She Said” in the winter of 2002.

Wait, let’s rewind. I’ve been back in Brooklyn for the past three weeks, bumming around before heading to Europe for the fall. So one night last week, I finally got around to hooking up my computer, which I had shipped home from California. I hadn’t quite realized it, but I missed my music. In the absence of my collegiate collection, I’d been listening to whatever was kicking around my computer from high school. I was shocked, then, to discover that I was listening to garbage in high school. Not even uppercase Garbage. Lowercase. The worst kind.

Sure, there was some Billy Joel and Tom Petty, but much of it was crap. As I scrolled through Musicmatch Jukebox (I’m dating myself even with that reference), I struggled to remember what possessed me to download some of these tracks. Vitamin C? I was probably battling a bout of ill-advised post-graduation depression. And what the hell is I Am the World Trade Center? Some electronica/jazz fusion band I found while searching Kazaa for music relating to my life’s problems. Seven different songs with “Allison” in the title? Elvis Costello would be ashamed.

I’m embarrassed by my underdeveloped, adolescent musical taste of yesteryear. But as I pour over my old playlists, I’m starting to suspect that my palette today may be too refined for its own good. Take, for example, my sister Anne, now a freshman in Junipero. We made a deal. She bought a Strokes album, and I bought one by Welcome to Florida. Who, you ask, is Welcome to Florida? Imagine if Jack Johnson and Pepper had a few tone-deaf children, fed them lead paint chips and then ordered them to sing. Sure, Helen Keller could pick out a better record than my sister — and I take every opportunity to note it — but has my snobbery made me enjoy music any more than in high school? I’m not sure.

Lately, it seems like I’m looking not for a good sound, but the “right” sound - the kind of music you need a brown corduroy jacket and ironic shoes to enjoy (both of which I incidentally own). If moods influenced my music taste in high school, maybe my music has been influencing my moods in college.

In high school, I listened to The Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun” at first light during an all-nighter. But play “Boys Don’t Cry” by The Cure and I’m transported back to my room in Toyon Hall, watching the sunrise through a Red Bull-induced haze. What the hell does that song have to do with that moment? Not much. I merely went through a Cure phase during one finals week, which probably owed to the fact that a “Cure phase” seemed like a college prerequisite.

This isn’t a great example, because I love that Beatles song and still enjoy it, but the question it raises remains: In my drive to listen to “better” music, did I forget why I listen to music in the first place? Yes, “Graduation” by Vitamin C is sentimental tacky sludge, but there was a reason I spent 30 minutes downloading it on my 56k modem, and it had nothing to do with elbow patches or aviator glasses.

It is with this on my mind that I travel to Berlin this fall. The Germans have never been known for their musical stylings, so perhaps some unassuming European pop will be the sorbet that wipes clean my cluttered palette. I’ll be sure to keep all of my readers abreast of my trials and tribulations, both music-related and otherwise.

Oh yeah, and I plan to be drunk for weeks at a time, so if I’m not sending back Shakespeare, I hope you’ll understand.

David Herbert is a junior majoring in History who managed to drunkenly fall face down on the sidewalk within four hours of arriving in London. E-mail him your empathy at dherbert@stanford.edu.