I was walking in the grocery store today when the song came on;
“Hello, Yeah, It’s been a while… Not much. How bout you? I’m not sure why I called I guess I really just wanted, to talk to you”.
Immediately I was taken back to a relationship I had back in high school.
So I’d like to ask, is there a song that when you hear it, suddenly takes you back to an important relationship?
BTW, would you agree that they don’t make songs that have such deep meaning anymore?
System of a down - highway song. Always reminds me of being in college with my brother. When the singer starts saying ‘our days are never coming back’, that hits me on multiple levels.
I think songs are still meaningful, but I think as you get older it gets harder and harder to find genuine meaning in the little things in life. So the songs today will have meaning for todays kids, teenagers and 20 somethings the same way the music had meaning for us when we were that age.
Anything off The Cars first album transports me back to high school and my girlfriend. Cruising around in my dad’s 1967 Valiant with the 8-track blasting.
Those really were good times.
Electric Blue, but only when I play it.
A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square – madly in love with a dreamboat Navy pilot wearing summer whites, piano bar in a cave-type restaurant.
When It’s Over – Statler Brothers. First heard this about a year after I got married. I was pulling out of the driveway to go work and realized I just wanted to keep on driving and never come home.
Wonderland By Night – first song on my first radio in my first apartment.
I play old songs because they are familiar and comfortable. New music hurts my ears.
“American Pie” and “Mandy” are two songs that immediately take me back to when I first heard them. There are many more.
I disagree that current music doesn’t have the same effect. The most recent song that is imprinting on me emotionally is Sam Smith’s “I’m Not the Only One.”
Another more recent song that hits me is “The Battle” by Missy Higgins, from 2007.
I do think it’s true that for most people, music has the strongest impact during their teens and early twenties. I turned twenty in 1983, and music from the late '70’s-early '80’s is still what primarily defines me.
I love music so there are several songs that take me back to specific times and relationships. Most of those times and places are before I hit my 30s but not exclusively so. And not all those songs are serious. I was going though a very bad time in my life a few years back while my MIL was dieing and a friend sent me this song that was so funny I almost injured myself laughing - during a time when I questioned if I could laugh at all. Whenever I hear it I remember a lot - all the emotions I was going through. But I also remember how laughter helped me deal with them. FWIW
(OK – someone will be curious so
htt ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_biZ8b2R0DA
it is probably not safe for most workplaces)
That one reminds me of the beach in a small shore town; sand, bathing suits, flip-flops… the two-shower rule: one before you come in the house & another before you get into street clothes. 
There are dozens of songs like that; too many to name. Try to fill a playlist & pretty soon its really the entire directory on shuffle.
Whats surprising is the diversity of the music… one memory might be “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police, but another might be “Moonlight” by Debussy or “Until The Night” by Billy Joel.
Some songs will hit you harder than others.
Yeah sometimes a song can also help one get thru a rough patch.
But then there are those songs that… well suddenly you remember a particular girls smile or eyes or hair.
And you cry a little.
Music can stir memories of times and places that once were; shadows of such moments and threads from long ago that we have long since woven together into the lives we live and wear (almost) daily.
Sometimes we all take a shirt that hasn’t been worn in years out of a drawer to wear for the day.
“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back?
There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”
-“Return of the King”, 2003
Oh good grief, yes. Dozens of them! Hell, I could fill up a couple of CDs with songs that remind me of a certain red-haired girl from high school.
No.
I assume you let them roll, knock you around, etc.
mmm
“Year of the Cat” or anything by ELO–and I’m standing in the hallway of my Junior High School. It’s so vivid I can even smell that school-hallway smell.
Other songs, I go back to where I was when I first heard them. “Tusk,” and I’m parking my old Chevy in the back yard. “These Dreams,” and I’m cleaning the powder room in my old house. “Peacekeeper,” and I’m shopping in our local vitamins-supplements-and-everything-else store.
Lionel Ritchey - Stuck on You
I married that girl!
There are a number of them that do that for me, but one in particular, somewhat unexpectedly, is “You Get What you Give” by New Radicals (really just a project of music pro Gregg Alexander). The effect is even stronger when watching the video. I’m from the high school class of 2000, so all the kids in the video look like people I knew, and the totally sincere theme of the video and song meld perfectly together. Beyond that, it’s interesting that Alexander is about ten years older than the kids in the video, thus bridging Generations X and Y, but he (and his work) don’t seem out-of-touch at all.
It’s not totally timeless, though. There’s a funny scene in the video where a bunch of kids swarm a suited businesswoman, and then, next thing you know, she’s in some mall-employee food court uniform, trying to fill everybody’s orders and getting exasperated. That aspect of adolescence has largely vanished, at least for now.
I really try not to indulge in this sort of backward-looking too often. Rather than feeling nostalgic, I kick myself again and again for all the missed opportunities, and then I think of more recent examples of the same, and I have the haunting feeling that there’s no way to make it up to myself now.
So yeah, songs hit me.
Oh, and you know what else? I learned from Wikipedia the reason for the rather different last verse of the song. Alexander decided to include several political lines, followed by a (tongue-in-cheek) series of disparaging comments about several people in the music world at the time. He wanted to see what would get more attention, and sure enough, the latter got more attention than the former.
The song and video always make me think, a bit painfully, about growing up, but there’s even more to it than that.
I well remember “I Like Dreaming” by Kenny Nolan…
…and when I hear it, I also remember Caroline.
'Nuff said.
When I hear “I Like Dreaming” I think of Jim.
Another song that conjures up some old feelings is “Make it with you” by Bread. I had just entered Jr. High and had my first boyfriend. Ahhhhhh … puberty.
My romantic dreams were theoretical at best but yeah, mid- to late-70s ballads take me back. “Let Your Love Flow”, “Dreamweaver” takes me back to middle school and that one hip teacher we had, “The Things We Do for Love”…
I saw an infomercial with Donny Osmond and almost sprang for the 150 hits of the 70s! There are so many good ones.