This kinda intersects a few things: what sort of music (new and old) have you been listening to relatively recently, and how recently can you say that an event has enough separation that a song can ‘take you back’ there?
I’m 61, but I’ve continued to listen to new music over the years. For me, Coldplay’s “The Scientist” and Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” take me back to the 2008-2009 winter, when my wife and I were trying to adopt a child. (Spoiler: we succeeded. The Firebug has been part of our family for just shy of six years now. Can’t imagine life without him.)
That’s the most recent pop music (defined loosely as stuff that gets airplay) that takes me back, since over the next few years, I didn’t listen to much new music. Stuff like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” takes me back to when the Firebug was a toddler, and I suppose that’s the most recent time a song takes me back to.
Weird Al’s “Mission Statement” takes me back to sitting in the parking lot of the hamburger joint in my old home town last summer, when the spouse and I went down there to clean out my dad’s house before selling it.
I’m 41, but Somewhere Only We Know is also the most recent song that takes me back to a different time or place (relatively the same date range too, in 2008-09, even though it was released a few years before that.). There are probably more recent songs that I’d associate with a specific event, but they’d seem so recent it wouldn’t really feel like “a different time”.
The 5 year time frame is fairly dramatic. A few years ago I realized that any song that is within 3 years of any song seems basically to be contemporary (with a few exceptions such as rock in 1961-1964 and 1989-1993.) 4 years apart, they seem vaguely contemporary. 5 years apart, boom, they’re totally from different musical eras.
I’m 50 and like many kinds of music. I keep up with what’s new, and it’s hit and miss as far as what strikes my fancy or sticks in my head. Bruno Mars “Runaway” takes me back to a few years ago when I had a nighttime commute. I only had regular radio (not Sirius or the like) in that car and the song was all over the place at the time. It grew on me. I no longer have that commute but still like the song. I’m sure there are others. This one jumped out because I happen to have listened to it just this morning while getting ready for work and sure enough it took me back to that previous nightly commute. Good times.
This isn’t all that recently, but in 2002 we moved to Colorado. We did the pack it and move it ourselves U-Haul thing, driving across country from the Chicago area. I-80 is a long drive through a lot of nowhere and the U-Haul’s radio only seemed to pick up country stations once we left the urban areas. Neither of us were country fans, but the radio helped keep us awake for the long drive. At that time, Rascal Flatt’s “God Bless the Broken Road” was very popular and it seemed as though it played regularly every 15-20 minutes on all the stations we pulled in as we traveled through the farmland.
To this day, whenever I hear that song, I’m back in that U-Haul driving across the prairie.
Probably too long ago to count but Johnny Cash’s version of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” really took me back to my early youth and the sort of hard-scrabble existence we had sometimes. I always remember the good parts; that song brings back the tough parts.
I really don’t listen to newer music and haven’t in decades. I keep current, sort of, because I have teenagers who play music for me.
But seriously, the last song that takes me back is “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I was in my late 20s living in a bachelor apartment when that first came on the radio. Wow! Instant classic and it transports me back to that apartment.
I think every adult can look back and pinpoint one depressing marker of leaving childhood; The year you had “your last summer”. After that you were at work, or in college, or whatever made all the weeks of the year the same. And it’s been that way ever since.
For me it was 1975, and spending the summer days waterskiing with my two best friends. I don’t remember what we listened to then, but Kenny Chesney’s “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems” (2002) always takes me back. We had no idea what adulthood would bring, and our biggest problem was an empty cooler.
*Want a towel on a chair in the sand by the sea
want to look thru my shades and see you there with me
Want to soak up life for a while
In laid back mode
No boss, no clock, no stress, no dress code
“Into the West” from the 2002 The Two Towers takes me back to when my father died, six years ago. I listened to it a lot that winter, and it takes me back to all the anger and frustration I felt about how my brothers mishandled things. I can’t listen to it any more.
