90s at 9 'The Freshmen' A Romeo And Juliet Story

The Verve Pipe released "The Freshmen" as a single nearly 5 years after it was recorded. 

There is a theory that the song is a Romeo and Juliet story. The young lovers were 14 years old, the age of the average Freshman and the "week's vacation" could be in reference to the time that Romeo was away when Juliet faked her death and "a week's worth of Valium" could refer to the poison Juliet took.

According to the FAQ on "Verve Pipings", the guitarist and lead singer Brian Vander Ark wrote the song in 1991 about the guilt he felt from his ex-girlfriend committing suicide, but she didn't actually commit suicide; the real incident which inspired the song was when his pregnant girlfriend had an abortion.

In a 2019 interview with Songfacts, Vander Ark said:

"...It's for the most part a made-up story, which most of my songs are. These are stories that I come up with, and I do characters. Part of the story was true in the fact that I had gone out with a girl and my buddy had gone out with her after I went out with her, and then I went out with her again and then she ended up getting pregnant and having an abortion. But from there, there's poetic license that happens and makes the story more dramatic. A neophyte writer that I was, I ended up having her commit suicide, and that never happened."

Vander Ark also stated that he never found out whether the baby was his or his friend's.

The Verve Pipe "The Freshmen" 1996