I’ve loved listening to Irish singers since I was a kid. There’s something about their vocals that can beautifully mix with traditional folksong instruments—like my favorite, the fiddle—and more modern tones like pop.
So, when I stumbled across Aimee Carty’s mesmerizing “2 Days Into College” on TikTok, she stole not only my attention but captured my and many others’ experiences with stress and school.
The first verse of the song—and the most iconic, if you heard this on TikTok—starts with a sharp introduction via piano as the singer starts to sing in a quick beat. This keeps up throughout the verse, until the singer changes the tempo at the end, resulting in a cascade effect that abruptly stops and picks back up at the previous tempo in the second verse.
In summary, the first verse seems to talk about the relatable college—and, by extension, school—experience of adjusting to classes, falling behind, and dealing with possible romance. Carty fits in a little light-hearted comedy by joking about locking herself out to prepare the listeners for her more heavy themes that follow.
The third verse follows the quick tempo in the beginning, but rather than continuing the pattern of a quick change from the first verse or the steady beat from the second, the tempo slowly winds down to a slower beat coupled with fewer notes played by the piano.
This portion of the song is where the themes of stress start to appear. Carty talks about her experience with receiving encouragement from peers about her efforts, and yet she doesn’t seem to know if those efforts are in vain. She seems to not know what she needs to do. It is followed by her repeating that she’ll figure it out, even though her tone says otherwise.
Carty talks about her experience with receiving encouragement from peers about her efforts, and yet she doesn’t seem to know if those efforts are in vain.
The fourth verse completely shifts out of the quick beat that started in verses one and two, following the third verse’s ending into a slow tempo-less beat that goes along with the singer’s vocals. The second part of the verse doesn’t follow a beat but the singer’s vocals to create a calming atmosphere.
The slow beginning of the song complements the previous action of Carty talking to herself to try and calm down. Trying to slow down time by slowing down the tempo emphasizes how unprepared the singer feels for all these changes. In the middle of the song, you can hear her tone shift from slightly panicked to settled as she embraces her reassurance. It ends with a drawn-out ending that emphasizes how she doesn’t need to figure it out yet because she’s not on a limit.
The tempo for the fifth and sixth verses parallels the first and second; they share the same starting lyrics, but they follow a slightly faster tempo than the first and second. The most notable change occurred at the beginning of the sixth and fifth. After the ending of the fourth verse, the tempo slowly ramps up—except for a slight low down, which continues until the sixth verse’s ending.
We get the tail-end of the singer accepting that time doesn’t have a limit for her yet, so she starts this portion of the song feeling more genuine than the beginning. She starts to make decisions, but all too quickly, those decisions cause more stress—like a never-ending cycle of pressure to do what’s right in the time she’s been given.
The finale—the ninth, tenth, and eleventh verses—combines all the elements and tempos included within the song. We get the beginning tempo again in the ninth verse, the rapid slow-down in the tenth verse, and finally, the tempo that follows the vocals and piano in the eleventh verse.
Ultimately, as the music raps up, we get the main allegory of the song: you don’t need to rush and put pressure on yourself, just accept things as they come and you’ll be fine.
Carty’s “2 Days Into College” is a love song for the students out there experiencing stress in any number of ways: for example, figuring out what they want to be or stressed about failing, etc.
It’s a song meant to represent that conflicting time in life when everything feels uncertain, and there is way too much pressure to figure it out. Sometimes, you just need to accept that you are only two days into college.
