A song about nostalgic songs is Yesterday Once More by the Carpenters.
“Puff, the Magic Dragon,” is kinda the poster child of nostalgic songs.
Les Temps de Cerises does it for me.
I agree, with the caveat that I think that range is about 4 or 5 years off. I’d go with songs that were popular from ages 11 - 21 rather 16 - 26. At least that’s true for me. I was born in 1977. I have much fonder memories of music from the late ‘80s than from the early ‘00s. Give me Rick Astley, Samantha Fox, NKOTB, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and so on, and someone else can have Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera, NSync, and the Backstreet Boys.
I think the range is sort of an individual thing - I don’t get really nostalgic about my grade school years and before 13, the only music I would have heard was my mother’s radio station. I get nostalgic when I hear what was played on the stations my friends and I listened to from age 13 to around 24. Which was not necessarily music that came out at that time , but that was when I heard it
That makes sense. For me it was listening to Casey Kasem’s countdown on the car radio on Saturday mornings when my family would take short road trips.
For me it’s “Let it Be” by the Beatles. I was 7 or 8 years old. My Dad was long out of the picture, and my Mom was on call and would sometimes get called away at night and make my 11 year old brother look after both of us…
It was pretty scary, but I had an old AM radio, and I’d put it on under the covers. That was when “Let it Be” was at the height of popularity The lyrics were very comforting to me then.
The entire 60s is nostalgic now. I was 13, just having discovered rock music, when I saw that first performance by the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I grew up with the Beatles and they grew every year while I watched. Top 40 radio meant everything in the 60s until I went to college and albums, unbelievable, world-shaking albums, abruptly replaced it. That world can never return.
And yet. Somehow some nostalgia is greater than other nostalgia, like a stack of infinities. For some reason that I’ve never been able to pin down, The Guess Who’s “These Eyes” and Blood, Sweat and Tears’ “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” just give me chills whenever I hear them.
Hopefully, the long version; I love the brief organ part in the middle.
And remember, lovin’ you is where it’s at.
The album version, which I assume is the long version.
That album I will defend to the death. The musicianship on it is superb, great jazz arrangements by great jazz musicians who could also rock. Also great pick of cover songs and David Clayton Thomas is restrained enough to perfectly match the music. Sure Al Kooper’s first album is good, but the cool crowd champions it while stomping all over the second album, which took the same core of musicians, added better arrangements and better songs and better singing and wound up with a better, even all-time-great album.
Yes. Mine would be 3 - 13 years old.
Great example (though for me it’s Redondo Beach in the 70s 
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I’ve always classified it in my mind as “evocative” but “purposefully nostalgic feel” is a good description too. I guess the distinction for me is “nostalgic” implies a specific time / place and BS transported me from the very first time I heard it. So the nostalgia is me remembering listening to it in the old days but the actual sound of it takes me to an imaginary place. Sorry, that probably doesn’t make sense.
Okay THIS song from St. Elmo’s Fire was intended to feel nostalgic from its inception
However, I find over time that now I actually associate the song with life events going on during the 1980’s.
I thought it was going to be Man in Motion . But, yeah, that has a very nostalgic feel. Like you could slot it into any number of old romcoms.
I think a classic example of this statement is, “Auld Lang Syne”. We have romanticized New Year’s Eve as the threshold of hope for a better year and the celebration of sweet memories of the past. It is, of course, a construct of our own minds. The reality is that December 31st is very much like December 30th and very much the way January 1st is going to turn out.
On a personal note, as individuals we tend to romanticize songs or wax nostalgic because of them simply because they are associated with meaningful personal memories that have absolutely nothing to do with the music itself.
The songs that are nostalgic to me are mostly from my childhood and teenage years.
Childhood: Bus Stop - The Hollies. My memory is walking home from the bus stop (!) and hearing that song coming out of the open windows of our house. My mom played that album a lot.
Teen years: Any song from Boston’s first album reminds me of keg parties. Someone would have speakers on the roof of their car blasting into the summer night. Heard It in a Love Song by The Marshall Tucker Band. I’m sitting in my boyfriend’s (now husband’s) GTO with the windows rolled down heading to the beach.
I notice that most of my nostalgia whether music or other memories are for the most part in the summer.
Agreed on both of these BST albums - I will defend them as well. In fact, I still listen to them. Got to give Al Kooper credit for bringing the Hammond B56 to rock music (see: Like a Rolling Stone).
One that still runs through my head after all these years is Old Friends/Bookends Theme (from Bookends album by Simon and Garfunkel). What a sweet/sad/melancholy song. Looking back, it WAS a time of innocence - though we didn’t know it at the time.
I cannot sing the old songs
I sung long years ago
For heart and voice would fail me
And foolish tears would flow
For bygone hours come o’er my heart
With each familiar strain
I cannot sing the old songs
Or dream those dreams again
I cannot sing the old songs
Or dream those dreams again
I cannot sing the old songs
Their charm is sad and deep
Their melodies would waken
Old sorrows from their sleep
And tho’ all unforgotten still
And sadly sweet they be
I cannot sing the old songs
They are to dear to me
I cannot sing the old songs
They are to dear to me
I cannot sing the old songs
For visions come again
Of golden drеams departed
And years of wеary pain
Perhaps when earthly fetters
Shall have my spirit free
My voice may know the old songs
For all eternity
My voice may know the old songs
For all eternity
Claribel, 1868, so in the Public Domain
Anyone nostalgic for that Loving Feelng?
Cynthia Weil, who wrote it just died today. Man, she had an impressive career.