Download mp3: Bryan Adams – Think About You (featuring My Freshman Year RA)
Alternative link to use if Soundcloud is not working.
When I was a Freshman at USC, my Resident Advisor fell in love with a student who lived on the second floor. He was so in love that he invoked what was called the “true love” clause of his contract with the school in order to date her (apparently, RAs can date students if they can convince some higher-up that they’re truly, madly, and deeply in love with each other). That was a long time ago, and I’m not sure if it was actually true love because I’ve lost touch with both of them and don’t know if they’re still together [Update: a friend from college tells me that they did, indeed, get married to each other].
"I could go drinkin', but I... can't stand the stuff."
To woo said girl, my RA decided to record himself singing over a Bryan Adams song and give it to her for Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure why this would have appealed to her, but apparently it did. Anyway, my RA didn’t have any sort of recording software, and was pretty clueless about how to do the whole thing. I had a copy of ACID Music, so I let him record this terrible little ditty onto my computer. In exchange, I ended up with this: an mp3 of the resultant monstrosity.
It’s kind of sweet, even though it’s also incredibly wretched. It makes me both laugh and squirm. I’m not exactly sure if this mp3 will be funny to people who don’t know the guy, but maybe there’s something universally appealing about this type of naivety and innocence. I mean, he just sounds lost. It’s enjoyable to hear other people doing embarrassing things.
Years ago, I uploaded this to the Internet and received an unhappy email from the RA, who as in the job market and pretty upset that the top search for his name on Google was this mp3…. This time around, I made it anonymous. Hopefully he won’t find it.
Filed under: Human Interest, mp3, Uncategorized, bad mp3s, bryan adams, karaoke, resident advisor, usc, valentine's day
Been done before. Teddy Roosevelt did exactly the same thing when he was wooing Edith Carow, except he used “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.
(Morris, Edmund. “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” 550-1)
[...] “How to win the love of a lady”—By Geoff Geis’ college RA (+ Bryan [...]
“It’s kind of sweet, even though it’s also incredibly wretched. It makes me both laugh and squirm.”
You hit it on the proverbial head. I think part of what makes it so amazing is that he sings it over the vocals, making it even more excruciatingly apparent how terrible his voice is. But it is sweet in a weird way… that is, until you remember the ridiculously loud jungle moaning that emanated from his room at 2am.
Oh and by the way, they are sadly now divorced.