Anything from Kneedeep in the Hoopla, or as we call it around here, The We Kidnapped and Threatened Grace Slick’s Family To Make Her Do This Album.
Probably half of my favorite 80’s songs fall into this category, but I can’t tell that they’re bad because I love them so.
Mr. Mister’s Broken wings–my very first dance, a Halloween dance on my 14th birthday (or maybe the day before?). I was hoping that the boy I liked would ask me to slow-dance, and this was the very last song of the night. (He didn’t. I have very good memories of him anyway, since he was so nice.)
Sister Christian, by, indeed, Night Ranger-- reminds me of playing at my friend Eden’s house in 2nd grade. She had a radio in her room and actually knew about pop music, which I did not. Her very favorite song was Time after time (Cyndi Lauper), but mine was this one. Virtually anything by Cyndi Lauper reminds me of her.
Alphaville’s Forever Young --one of my best college friends always cried when this song was played, because it reminded her of the boy she had loved all through high school and really still had a thing for (which she may well do to this very day, she had it that bad). At a dance (in Hayward!), she went out to the hall and cried while I tried to console her.
Depeche Mode’s Somebody had pretty much the same effect on my next-door neighbor, just because it was such a beautiful song. She would be dancing with some boy, eyes full of tears, while it played.
–I went to a lot of dances as a teen. I won’t bore you with every story!
Talking loud and clear by OMD–a boy I wrote to a lot named Darren. We never dated, but he wanted to; even asked if I would consider marrying him. He was a great penpal, but in person I just couldn’t click with him so well. Weird, that.
Too true, too true! I actually run to this on my iPod. It makes me giggle because I am, indeed, a fat-bottomed woman. And apparently I make the rockin’ world go 'round. Not that I’m a narcissist or anything. 
Okay, “Hey Jude” the crap/not crap Beatles song from … hmm, 1968?
There was a Hallowe’en party/dance at school my senior year in high school. I worked for a week on screwing my courage to the sticking place and finally asked a sophomore named Penny to the dance. She was witty, smart, pretty and had a laugh that just made me light-headed. Some time during the dance the DJ played “Hey Jude” and we slow-danced to it. All of it. I was aware of nothing except the citrus scent her perfume, the silky softness of her hair against my face and the seductive movement of her slender body in my arms. It was the first time I’d ever held a girl that close for that long. By the end of the song, I was hoplessly, helplessly, mindlessly in love. I couldn’t stand to not be close enough to her to feel her presence. I devoted my life to making her happy.
We went steady until just after Valentine’s day, when she dumped me for a guy named Bill because he had his own car (I always had to borrow my parents’ '56 Chevy station wagon). I survived the ordeal, but to this day when I hear “Hey Jude” I am transported back to the cavernous, dark gymnasium. Those six minutes and thirty-three seconds were among the best of my high school years.
Well, it’s the Beatles, but I’m not sure it’s a bad song. But Yesterday always makes me think of drunken Danes, usually in the giant tent we had for costumes behind the open-air theater I was in one summer. It turns out that when Danish people get drunk enough, they start singing Yesterday.
Woo Hoo! Class of 85!
Anything by Debbie Gibson (particularly “Foolish Beat” and “Lost in Your Eyes”) reminds me of my high school crush, a nice Filipino boy I used to have lunch with all the time. He was my prom date, and I remember dancing with him to “Thinking of You” by Sa-Fire. (What happened to her?) All we did was dance, though. I still wonder how he’s doing, sometimes. One song that made me cry thinking about how I never had the courage to tell him my feelings was “Could’ve Been” by Tiffany:
Could have been so beautiful
Could have been so right
You could have been my lover
Every day of my life…
…how can you hold what could’ve been
On a cold and lonely night?
On a more cheerful note, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” reminds me of a German girl I used to hang out with in college. We would sing that song sometimes as a joke. I miss those days.
We always used to sing “Leprosy” when it played. “Leprosy … body parts are falling off of me …”
I’ve been playing Schoolhouse Rock for my 4-year-old lately. Schoolhouse Rock was a series of educational songs/cartoons on Saturday morning TV in the early 70’s and when I hear them now they just floor me because it transports me to a life which was so much less complicated, so much more innocent (and naive).
Coven’s One Tin Soldier would have gone nowhere if it weren’t for this dude.
I like Nena AND Journey! I’m so cheesy.
Does Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” count?
DAMN, Clogboy, you’re right!
(We need a “Hubba hubba” smiley)
And Freudian, I like Nena too. I have no problem with the music being crap at the same time though. 
Heck, most of my music collection. I bought the time-life sounds of the 70s one night when I came home drunk and saw the commercial on late-night sci-fi channel.
I got one: Joan Baez’s version of “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down”.
It reminds me of driving in the car at night from New York to Rhode Island to visit my aunt and uncle. It was my Mom and Dad in the car with three sleepy kids in the back, my youngest brother wasn’t even born yet.
My aunt and uncle are gone now and Dad isn’t doing so well but that song brings me right back.
There are a lot of songs that I can remember where I was when I heard it, not necessarily the first or the last time I heard it, just for some reason or other that I remember being in a certain place when hearing it, nothing really special or nostaglia-worthy:
[ul]
[li]“When You Close Your Eyes” by Night Ranger: It played on the radio while I was on my way to the junior high school with my mother to register for the eighth grade.[/li][li]“Never Surrender” by Corey Hart: I was with a friend and his dad on our way to watch a college football game. We had stopped at Burger King at the drive-thru on our way there.[/li][li]“Rock Me Amadeus” by Falco: It was playing on the music system at a video arcade we frequented during lunch in my sophomore year of high school.[/li][li]“99 Luftballoons” by Nena: same as aboe.[/li][li]“Bop 'Till You Drop” by Rick Springfield(?): A guy named Cliff brought a big-ass boombox (remember those things?) on the school bus and this was one of the songs he shared with the ridership.[/li][li]“Bad Girl” by Donna Summer: It came on the radio while I was headed to the store with my mother.[/li][li]“Jackie Blue” by Ozark Mountain Devils: Coming home with my mother in five o’clock traffic. We stopped at the car wash on the way home.[/li][li]“Ain’t No Sunshine” by Al Green: I’ve heard the song many times, but why I associate it with a trip to my grandparents’ house eludes me to this day. Maybe this was the first time I heard it.[/li][li]“It’s Magic” by The Cars: Played on the radio during driver’s ed (yes, we could listen to the radio at low volume).[/li][li]“Abra Cadabra” by the Steve Miller Band: Played on the radio while we were at a gas station. I was sitting in the car while my mother filled up the tank. I even remember the gas station we were at, which is still there under the same name.[/li][/ul]
Not all of these are “crappy” songs, necessarily, mind you.
Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life.”
The first kid in our school to carry around a boom box played Celebration by Kool and the Gang over and over and over and over and over and over…
Okay, this has gotta be treason. Joan Baez’s anything cannot be rightly classified as crap.
Anything on Samantha Fox’s *Touch Me * album. It takes me right back to hot summer nights in Phoenix.
Stacey Q’s “Two of Hearts” takes me back to my grandmother’s house and spending long summer weekends there with nothing to do but listen to the radio and play Centipede with my aunt.
Guns N’ Roses’ *Sweet Child O’ Mine * will always remind me of the stuff I did in school, and the people associated with it.