SLU Tunes Unites Campus Community

Music Tastes of Students Are Being Shared in a Creative Way 

The music a person listens to isn’t always just a catchy melody; it can be a form of self expression and a unique part of how that person experiences the world. For sophomores Will Chalfant and Lucy Albrecht, everyone’s personal music taste is an experience worth sharing. In February of 2024, they created the SLU Tunes Instagram account to do just that. The two opened up Sunday about the identity of SLU Tunes and what the project means to them.

Each SLU Tunes post is a video compilation of Albrecht and Chalfant approaching anyone walking by on campus who they see wearing headphones or earbuds, asking what song the person is listening to and playing that song as the soundtrack of the video as the person walks away.

Chalfant and Albrecht said that they met when they lived in the same residence hall their first year. Both of them are in the SLU UpBeats acapella group and their shared love of music led to their collaboration on SLU Tunes.

“We just thought it would be a fun thing to do,” Albrecht said. In high school, Chalfant had a Tik Tok account with the same concept as SLU Tunes, inspired by videos he had seen on social media, but he wasn’t motivated to do it again at SLU until he joined forces with Albrecht.

Chalfant said that the main impact he hopes SLU Tunes will have on the SLU community is to entertain people and bring them together.

“I enjoy doing it,” he said. “I just hope people feel like it makes the campus more connected.”

“I think some people – after they’ve seen one or a few of our videos – some people want to be interviewed, so they listen to more music,” Albrecht said. “It could be broadening other peoples’ music taste.”

Albrecht and Chalfant agreed that they themselves have both discovered a lot of new music by doing SLU Tunes.

Chalfant described what it means to him to share an individual person’s music taste with others. “When I listen to music walking around campus… it’s just like, I’m going to entertain myself by listening to music, not really talking to anybody,” he said. “But like, that’s a moment, in and of itself, so I feel like our videos shine a light on those moments.”

Lately, SLU Tunes has been getting more creative and playful with some of their editing work. In their most recent video, they made a reference to the “very mindful, very demure” trend, and at another point they played two songs on top of each other after approaching two people who were together but listening to different songs. Chalfant described SLU Tunes’s sense of humor as “lighthearted and kind of ironic.”

When asked how both of them are growing and innovating as content creators, Albrecht said the creativity mostly just happens as they go through the process of making the videos.

They want to keep the core format of their videos intact, but they have room to think outside the box within that basic structure.

Albrecht and Chalfant try to be random in choosing people to approach for their videos. Sometimes they interview friends, other times they approach people they haven’t met before. It’s mostly just about finding someone wearing headphones or earbuds.

Any time a person asks them not to use a clip because they are uncomfortable, they always make sure to respect the person’s boundaries and privacy. They never post anything that they have been asked not to use.

They try to alternate between which one of them is filming and which one is doing the interviewing so that they each do an equal amount of both.

Chalfant does all of the editing in the SLU Tunes videos using the CapCut app. He said he chooses what part of the song to play in the video somewhat randomly, but he tries to choose a part that has lyrics and conveys the feeling of the song.

Some of SLU Tunes’s biggest challenges are finding times when both members can meet up to record and finding people who are listening to music. Another challenge was when their microphones broke and they had to buy new ones.

Albrecht and Chalfant try to film about once a week, with plans to continue creating content into the foreseeable future. SLU Tunes currently has 371 followers.

Along with SLU Tunes and UpBeats, Albrecht and Chalfant are active on campus in a variety of other ways. Albrecht is in Marcy Band and SLU Funk and lives in the Green House. Chalfant is a member of the varsity cross country and track teams, is part of the Dooques band, plays club basketball and participates in the Singing Saints vocal group.