Probably too many to name! Shoot, I got a little misty in the Love Boat thread.
The new wave songs of around 1983 (“Safety Dance”, “In a Big Country”, “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”, etc.) always bring back my days at gifted camp. I was from a very small town, and 13-year-olds had very little exposure to such things. Two weeks of college town media had to go a long way.
“Sugar Sugar” and “Dancing In The Moonlight” were the very first singles I bought with my allowance. Whenever they play on my employer’s satellite radio I sing right along with them.
My dad adored Jim Croce. “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” was the last song he remembered before he passed.
I auditioned for a school show with “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia”.
I played “I Think I Love You” at full tilt when David Cassidy passed.
Since I’m older than the earth’s core, I remember songs from the late 50’s. Stupid Cupid by Connie Francis, Splish Splash by Bobby Darin. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (don’t know who sang that!) was a favorite of my cousin and me! And another one called She Can’t Find Her Keys.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin really imprinted itself on my young psyche. Decades later, still one of my favorite songs, I have it on a CD out in the car.
Yes to all of these and 600 more from my HS years (this is why I had to cut my list off at jr. high). I’ve found that some '80s songs I despised - like “Jump” - are very evocative now.
Please don’t tell anyone, I was a cool New Waver and this would ruin my rep.
I couldn’t even begin to name them all. Pretty much anything from the middle '70s to early '80s will do it for me. They remind me of a happy, carefree child/teenhood and my early college years. I love some of the cheesiest '70s songs ever, because of that.
1970, I was eight years old and we had gone to spend Christmas in NH at my mother’s cousin’s house…they had two daughters, one who was probably 13, and one closer to my age…Christmas day, the older girl opened a present, a record album, screamed at the top of her lungs, ran up to her room and proceeded to play said album at high volume over and over again for the rest of our visit…and when I hear CCR play, “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor”, it takes me immediately back to a snowy visit to NH a long time ago…still a great song…
Another is “Saturday In the Park”, we spent several summers in my Mom’s hometown in VT, they used to have little concerts in the town park on Saturday evenings, it was mostly oompah bands and local folk singers, but for some reason, whenever I hear that song, it takes me back to summertime playing with my cousins while the band played in the little gazebo…
Yes, this one, too, I remember my Mom humming to it in the kitchen while she made lunch…wow, had totally forgotten that one until I read it and it instantly played in my mind…
I’m afraid I may have to surrender all of my Grateful Dead tee shirts, bootleg tapes and Dick’s/Dave’s Picks CDs if I publicly admit that that was the very first album I ever purchased with my allowance money…
I’ll do you one better: not only was that also the first album I bought with my own money, over the years it disappeared, so when CDs hit the record stores, I bought a Greatest Hits CD. Still got it. So now, I have crystal clear, distortion-free bubble gum.
“Maneater” by Hall and Oates. I was eight or nine at the time, and I thought the line “watch out boy, she’ll chew you up” was hilarious. (I was taking it literally, and loved the idea of a pop song about cannibalism.)