Song Number 49

Introduced by Jeff Cobb

Song #49 in our Countdown to 50 brings back that moment when high school started feeling a little less like a routine and a little more like a question.

This one has the sound of hallway clocks, counselor conversations, late-night drives, and that first uneasy feeling that the future was closer than we thought. It is thoughtful, catchy, a little restless, and very much part of the soundtrack from our Riverside years.

Watch the next entry in our Top 50 Countdown below.

Welcome to the June 2026 edition of the Riverside Class of 1980 Top 50 Countdown of songs from our years in High School. 

You know that feeling — somewhere around junior year — when it started to dawn on you that the world had opinions about who you were supposed to become? This song opens with that exact moment. The piano comes in clean and deliberate, almost like a classroom clock ticking, and then those keyboards start to swell and pulse with something that feels urgent and searching all at once. 

By the time the vocals kick in, you’re already back in the hallways of Riverside, wondering whether to follow the track laid out by your counselor or the one your gut was quietly suggesting. It didn’t matter if you were cutting through Concord on a foggy Tuesday morning or sitting in the Burger King parking lot after a Friday night game — when WMMS dropped this one, everybody in the car went a little quiet. It asked the question most of us were too cool to say out loud: “what exactly are we turning into here?” 

Smart, a little uneasy, and built on a groove that somehow made existential dread feel completely singable — this is the soundtrack to every moment we stood at the edge of growing up and weren’t entirely sure we wanted to jump.

Now here to introduce the song is classmate Jeff Cobb from one of the many Riverside classrooms where he taught Health for 33 years and retired from in 2025?

Do you know what song he’ll introduce?