| The Freshmen | |
| Cover: | TheVervePipe-TheFreshman.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | the Verve Pipe |
| Album: | Villains |
| B-Side: |
|
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 4:30 |
| Label: |
|
| Producer: | Jack Joseph Puig |
| Prev Title: | Cup of Tea |
| Prev Year: | 1996 |
| Next Title: | Villains |
| Next Year: | 1997 |
"The Freshmen" is a song by American alternative rock band the Verve Pipe. Released in January 1997 as the third single from their second studio album Villains, the song became the band's breakthrough hit and is the group's highest-charting single, peaking at number five on the US Billboard Hot 100, number six in Canada, and number 28 in Australia.
In an interview with Exclusive, lead singer and songwriter Brian Vander Ark stated that the incident which inspired the song was when his pregnant girlfriend had an abortion.[4]
In a 2018 interview with Songfacts, Vander Ark said:
Vander Ark told the Boston Globe in 2022 that he hadn't originally intended to write a song about abortion, but that once he'd keyed in on the grounding phrase—"stop a baby's breath, and a shoe full of rice"—it allowed him to tap into his ambivalence over the experience: "Growing up in a very conservative Reform Christian home, I struggled with guilt. It just felt cathartic to release the lyric into the world as a way to half-admit my participation, because I struggled to process it."[5]
"The Freshmen" was one of several songs about abortion that were released by male musicians in the 1990s. Referring to RCA Records' 1999 decision to cancel the U.S. release of the Swedish singer Robyn's album My Truth, which included songs about her 1998 abortion, Vander Ark said, "RCA did not put up any roadblocks, never talked to us about changing a lyric, never seemed to even care. And I've always felt like 'The Freshmen' was pretty obviously about abortion. Look, I'd bet that it had to do with me being male and her running afoul of a certain code of femininity. It's sad, too, especially on an album called My Truth, when you have this gutsy openness, to then get silenced by male gatekeepers in the industry."
The song first appeared, in acoustic style, on their 1992 album I've Suffered a Head Injury. It was recorded a second time and released on the band's 1996 album, Villains. Later that year, the band recorded the song again, this time with the producer Jack Joseph Puig,[6] for release as a single in January 1997.[7] Subsequent pressings of Villains replaced the original album version with the single version.
In addition, a slightly modified single version was released to radio, with Vander Ark singing the final lyrics of the second verse ("thinks about her now and how he never really wept") in the same melodic sequence as he sings the homologous lyrics at the end of the first verse ("stop a baby's breath..."), as opposed to his higher-pitched, almost yelled rendering of these lyrics in the version that appeared on the album.
US CD single[8]
US cassette single[9]
A. "The Freshmen" (album mix) – 4:29
B. "The Freshmen" (pop mix) – 4:29European and Australian CD single[10]
| Chart (1997) | Position | |
|---|---|---|
| Canada Top Singles (RPM)[12] | 48 | |
| US Billboard Hot 100[13] | 21 | |
| US Adult Top 40 (Billboard)[14] | 15 | |
| US Mainstream Rock Tracks (Billboard)[15] | 24 | |
| US Modern Rock Tracks (Billboard) | 8 | |
| US Top 40/Mainstream (Billboard)[16] | 26 | |
| US Triple-A (Billboard)[17] | 9 |
|}
| Region | Date | Format(s) | Label(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | January 21, 1997 | Rock radio | [18] | |
| March 4, 1997 | Contemporary hit radio | [19] |
