Senior Staff Writer Jake Tibbetts, with input from other staffers, has assembled a playlist for you to listen to as you embrace new beginnings and look to the future. Before you ask, he did include more than one Vampire Weekend song.

New semester. New year. New decade. New century. Old joke about me being bad at math.

Welcome to the 2020s — also known as Roaring Twenties: The Squeakquel, Roaring Twenties 2: Electric Boogaloo, 2 Twenty 2 Twenties, or The Final Decade Before Climate Change Causes All That We Know And Love To Perish!

There are some small similarities between this new decade and the decade ten prior to it. While that decade had Eugene Debs running for president, this one has fellow socialist Bernie Sanders doing the same. While that decade had the Lost Generation writing tales of alienation and confusion and meaninglessness, this decade has Zoomers making TikToks expressing those same feelings with a more humorous bent. And while that decade eventually led to a slide into economic catastrophe, this decade… will lead to the exact same thing, probably.

Anyway, to celebrate new beginnings, we’ve made you a soundtrack to the new era! Some songs are meant as expressions of acknowledgement of the new year (e.g., “The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie, “New Year” by Beach House, “New Year’s Day” by U2… noticing a pattern?). Some songs do the same thing in a bit of a subtler fashion (like “What’s the World Got in Store” by Wilco). Some songs are callbacks to the Real Roaring Twenties (e.g., “Old Man River” by Paul Robeson, “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin). “See You Again” by Tyler, the Creator is in there because the phrase “twenty-twenty twenty-twenty vision” is uttered. “The Spirit of Radio” by Rush is in there in memory of Neil Peart, who died earlier this month. “2021” by Vampire Weekend is in there because it’s called “2021” and it’s by Vampire Weekend. And a huge assortment of tunes are included simply because they slap. (Thank you to Senior Staff Writer Henry Golub for the Linda Ronstadt recs.)

We hope you enjoy! Feel free to leave any of your own New Year’s jams in the comments.

“The Great Gatsby 2015” via Paula R. Lively.