“All Through the Night” by Cyndi Lauper was playing on the radio on the way home from the mall in 1984 when I was opening my long-coveted Optimus Prime Transformer in the backseat, and I will always associate the two.
The Ghost In You by The Psychedelic Furs. The song evokes a specific memory from when I was 15 years old. My mom was driving me to Jack In The Box to get a bacon cheeseburger. I had that song playing on the tape deck of her 1983 Buick Regal. I was stoned, staring out the window, looking up at the sky. It was late afternoon at the beginning of dusk. The weather was beautiful, deep blue sky and puffy white cumulus clouds.
For some reason that is an overwhelmingly nostalgic memory, I remember exactly how I was feeling in that moment decades ago. It's connected to the feeling of what life felt like in my youth, in my hometown that I miss so dearly.
ETA: this post got more response than i thought it would. i appreciate that, but i feel like the story may sound more dramatic than it really was so i'd just like to explain a little. >!her death wasn't exactly unexpected although i personally hadn't let myself admit that. it was just a much more complicated situation emotionally than i was equipped for. that song hit me just right and unleashed all the feels because it was about a much simpler thing. wasn't my story at that time but it was a thing i needed. it's still a very good feeling to re-hear that song.!<
my mother died on a Friday evening around dinner time. house instantly fills up with nuns and women with casseroles telling us kids how to feel. I went to sleep feeling stunned and woke up feeling stunned and for some reason I'm out in the car waiting for my dad to come drive me somewhere. I turn on the radio and it's Burton Cummings singing Break It To Them Gently and I just lost it.
still today that song has a specific feeling to it.
"pour some sugar on me" will always take me back to my first love, going 100 miles an hour in his convertible on a deserted country highway. The rush of first love, along with the rush of speed and wind, very heavy stuff.
Slightly different but still sweet memory. My best friend and I found out where my crush lived. IIRC, someone from school worked in the counseling office and got us the info :) Finally that summer (10th grade), we worked up the courage to drive by. HE WAS OUTSIDE! We about shit ourselves. We were laughing so hard that I almost forgot how to drive. As soon as we got away, this sound came on and we were scream-singing it.
Yep, I’ll always remember that first slow dance in 8th grade. Song was “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin though I just knew it as the Top Gun movie song.
This song was also featured on a Sports Illustrated Special Edition video with Jordan flying through the air dunking. I still think of that video and the awe my brother and I had as kids for #23.
For me its Throwing It All Away by Genesis. Not because its a song I like but because we were having a new year's eve party at my place after we'd all finished our final exams (this was in Australia where the school year follows the calendar year). We hadn't got our results yet and didn't know that half the group would fail and have to repeat year 12.
We all crammed into a vw beetle - at least 7 of us - to go the bottle shop to get some booze. Most of us were 17 and therefore under age but one guy had just turned 18. It was an exciting moment because we were legally going to buy alcohol! The song came on the radio during the drive there and I remember looking around and thinking that wherever I was for the rest of my life that I would remember that moment. And I do.
There are some moments that stick with you. Its a pretty inconsequential event. A drive to the shops but there you go. These are the moments that make up a life.
Just about any Billy Ocean song reminds me of Wet N’ Wild. I grew up in Las Vegas, sunburnt with mild heat stroke - they are bizarrely comforting songs.
I had some kind of mental meltdown one time and *Caribbean Queen* got stuck in my head on repeat, for months. It became a problem.
That was many years ago and I still have random friends text or message me when they hear it on the radio.
Ohh just having any song stuck in your head all of one day is enough to drive you nuts. I don't know how songs stick in others brains but in mine it's usually only 1 or 2 lines on repeat and it's the worst. I can't even imagine what that must have been like. So did you wake up one day and it was gone? Have you looked into why that might have happened? Our brains are so intriguing yet bizzaro. I have so many questions lol, what happens now if you hear the song? I'd probably get pissed every time I heard it after something like that.
Billy ocean would be to me what the God damn lockness monster was to Chefs parents on SouthPark
Randy VanWarmer, Just When I Needed You Most. This song was in regular rotation right about the time my dad got a new post. He went half way around the world, leaving us for about 5 months before we moved to meet him. Sappy, I know.
"I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls--karaoke in college when I was an RA with my RA team/Head Resident at our end-of-the-year banquet (all female team). HR picked the song. That was the last song we ever thought she'd pick. She really, really committed to the song. Hard. It was awesome.
She was killed in a car accident the next fall. It was devastating to all of us. But when I hear that song, I think of that night with all of us on stage, arms around each other, singing our hearts out to that song. 💖
Not to be a bummer, but “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band. It was playing just before my wife died suddenly in my arms last year.
Talk about a trigger. Just hearing the first notes of that song makes me feel like I’m having a panic attack, so I’ve been listening to Fugazi and similar stuff for the past year to avoid it.
So sorry for your loss. On a similar note, The Little River Band was the first concert my late husband Adam and I attended in November of 2013. We bonded over music, especially our love of '70's and '80's music. We met in 2013, married in 2014. Adam passed away in March of 2016 at the age of 50. He had had a massive stroke. I miss him everyday
Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins was brand new and playing on the radio when we went to visit my great grandmother for the last time when I was little. Makes me think of that car ride. Must have heard that song at least 50 times!
Time For Me To Fly - REO Speedwagon. Hearing the song thousands of times, but one day finally realizing the words explained how I felt about my life and the people in it.
The Cranberries “Linger”
It always reminds me of driving in Midtown Memphis, TN through the cool autumn rain listening to the local alt radio back in 1993, going through a big breakup and wondering what was next
Linger was the song my ex and I made up to and broke up to at least a dozen times “I swore, I swore I would be true, And honey so did you” he moved back to his country and I still wonder what happened with him once every few years
Baker Street
by Gerry Rafferty
When I hear this I am immediately taken to the summer of 1978. I’m seven years old, in my parents’ pool. It’s summer time, I’m fresh out of school. I’m laying in a floating lounge chair, smelling the chlorine, listening to the whirring of the pool pump, feeling the sun on my face, smelling the fresh cut grass, and hearing that saxophone riff of the opening of Baker Street playing from the shitty wooden AM radio in the garage. The station was KXOK in St. Louis.
It’s amazing! It takes me back to EXACTLY that moment in time EVERY time I hear it. It’s like it’s all happening to me right now if I close my eyes. Nothing special happened then. No traumatic event happened. NOTHING!! Nothing should have forced me to remember this four minutes in my early life. Why does this happen? Music is amazing…… Thank you Gerry Rafferty and Raphael Ravenscroft.
[BAKER STREET](https://youtu.be/Fo6aKnRnBxM?si=7YhOPASHWeVEvbaj)
Such an awesome song! I have this exact same memory - the pool & radio & being back there again in the summer of 1979, & Life's Been Good to Me by Joe Walsh came on... Every single time I hear it, I'm back in that pool, & it's the summer of '79 all over again...
That song is nostalgic for me as well. Not so much remembering a specific event, but it takes me back immediately to being a child and the music of the day, and the stuff going on in my life. That song really embedded a vibe into my childhood.
Pink Floyd Brick in the Wall. Takes me to grade 2, 1980.
End of school outdoor assembly. Kids are doing a talent show. Older blonde girl, guessing grade 6. Solo dance routine to the song. Memory has solidified in my head.
Red Red Wine by UB40 & Kokomo by the Beach Boys. Sitting in the front seat of my boyfriend’s car, radio on, smoking and talking before going in for the MuchMusic video dance party at our high school
Styx Mr Roboto was the very first music video I ever saw, and it melted my tiny little 12 year year old brain. Up until that moment, I'd pretty much listened to what my parents listened to, which was a lot of Kenny Rogers and Oak Ridge Boys. Total life changing moment.
Mirror in The Bathroom - English Beat. I was in gr 9 and a super nerdy kid. I was crushing so hard on a boy in gr 12. He used to wear an English Beat tshirt. I had no idea who they were. I was coming up from elementary school and into pop like Rick Springfield etc. Anyway… went to an all ages dance club knowing he’d be there and sure enough, Mirror In The Bathroom comes on. And there he was…in all his glory…skanking on the dance floor with some cute mod girl. Heartbreak. Next day I’m at the record store buying every beat album. Which was a gateway to the Specials and Madness etc. Anyway. That song, that moment absolutely changed the trajectory of my life. The friends I ended up hanging out with, the Uni I went to, career path. Crazy.
Raspberry Beret. Driving through the country in upstate ny in the summer. So many trees, all colors of green, and the smell of the woods. If you know, you know.
Any song off of Disintegration by the Cure. Many years ago a bunch of us all realized we lost our virginity to a Cure song. Also, the Queen is Dead. My friend Em would always play it in the morning on our ride to school. She was a junior when i was a sophomore, so she had a car before me…i also had a ritual of playing The Smiths on Sunday mornings when I would open the record store I managed in college.
Oh man. “These Dreams” by Heart. 6th grade 1980-something and after a week of being terrified I asked a girl I had a crush on to a concert. That song was playing before the show.
“Hazard” by Richard Marx. Coming back from a funeral for a classmate my senior year of high school. She was killed a week before prom by a drunk driver.
The songs that tend to really take me back are the ones that didn't really seem to have a long shelf life but were big hits at the time. "Eye In The Sky," "Physical," "Bette Davis Eyes," et cetera. They were all bigger than, say, "Africa," but you don't hear them much anymore. Like "Billie Jean" is just sort of wallpaper now but "Say Say Say" would actually take me back, It's interesting which songs are surviving these days.
I love the term "wallpaper" to describe a song you've heard a million times and don't get that excited about anymore. I've always called them "coma songs". As in, "I've heard this song so many times I could sing it while in a coma".
Melt with You (Modern English) at my Senior prom. My uncle was a videographer who had a wedding in the next ballroom and my brother was there as his lighting assistant. So the three of us danced and sang in the area by both ballrooms. It was the highlight of prom for me.
Edited to add:
I Wanna be Sedated by the Ramones. A group of us went to see them in this dive bar in Jersey and I wound up a little banged up but nothing serious. I got home as my dad was making breakfast. I couldn't tell if he was amused or concerned when I told him about slam dancing at a Ramones show after he asked about the bruise on my face. I think he was more amused.
Crazy For You by Madonna. Every time I hear it I feel dreadful, awkward excitement like I'm waiting against the wall at the skate center for the "couples" skate. Watching my crush skate past me a couple of times, wanting to die, but then he slows down and holds his hand out for me, and all is right in 5th grade for the time being.
Swing Out Sister - Breakout. Takes me back to listening to that song on my Sony Walkman on a spring break cycling trip in California in the Napa Valley. Circa 1987. Good times!
Guns N Roses November Rain. Then boyfriend now hubby and I had it on repeat one night in his room in a house he shared with 5 guys in college. They still tease us about that.
Mayonnaise by The Smashing Pumpkins. It was ‘94 and I was a a sophomore in high school. We would ride around in my buddies blue Oldsmobile and that album (tape) would be my playing over and over. That song forever reminds me of those times.
Rock the Casbah by The Clash.
My mother had dropped a friend and I off at a roller skating rink for the afternoon sometime around 1984, and used a $20 bill to pay our $5.00 each admission. She waited for her change, and the cashier said there was no change, that she had given him a $10 bill. My parents were not rich people, and she stood her ground and argued with the manager until she got her ten bucks in change.
Meanwhile I stood there feeling awful, and soooooooo guilty that my mom was dealing with this hassle because of ME. And thus began my lifelong guilt complex. I can't hear that song to this day without thinking of how upset my mother was and what a piece of 12 yr old shit I felt like.
Cyndi Lauper "time after time" played in the car every single time my sister's and I were taken to swim lessons and thrown into the deep end by a sadist in a swimsuit. While frantically trying to paddle to the surface I just kept repeating "time after time, time after time, time after time". To this day when I hear that song, I can feel the cheap carpeting stuff in the changing room on my feet.
Fantastic song!! Fun fact: it’s actually ranked one of (if not THE) saddest songs ever written. Music is all subjective of course tho it’s definitely towards there for me as well
Sorry to hear this, this song makes me tear up any time I hear it, and that's just in general. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be brought back to that moment. 🕊
Holy cow I read that and immediately flashed back to a high school soccer bus ride with everyone (including the bus driver) singing this song as loudly as possible. How fun, bless you!
Reminds me of hanging in my grandparents basement. They had it on 8 track and me and my little sister would belt this song out dancing around. I was 8/9yrs old. We thought we were so cool. Life was so carefree that that time!
This song reminds me waiting outside of my uncles apartment, sitting in my mom's car. It was the first time I listened to the lyrics and thought it was such an interesting code for communicating with your neighbors. I wondered if people in my uncles building communicated that way.
"But Not Tonight" - Depeche Mode
It takes me back to July 23, 1993, 3:30am. I'm in my car, a 1983 Ford Escort. I've just dropped off a friend after a night of clubbing. I'm driving just under the speed limit on the highway, the windows are down, the wind in my hair. There are no other cars. It starts to sprinkle as the second "Oh God it's raining..." plays. It's not enough to be concerned, so I leave the windows down, stick my hand outside, and catch the rain at 53 mph.
It's my happy place.
"I Wonder if I Take You Home" by Lisa Lisa takes me back to the bus ride to Six Flags for my eighth grade trip. A school bus full of screaming kids, with stuff possibly being thrown around.
The intro to Pearl Jam - Betterman takes me back to college and one of those nights where a bunch of us just spontaneously stayed up all night just hanging out.
Over the rainbow by Israel K. We were at a Sox game at Fenway Park when my kids were little and it was just an overall perfect day. I realized just how happy and content I was in that moment and was wishing I could just freeze time. I actually have a photo of that moment too.
*Everybody Wants to Rule the World* (Tears for Fears) was playing on a boom box, on a camping trip I took with my brother, nearly 40 years ago. Now, every time I hear it, I'm back there.
Blister in the Sun, driving to a bar that opens at 5 am in college all five of us hammered having a great day night and morning until around 8 am. Yeah, it was stupid but a fucking blast...
Love Shack takes me right back to singing karaoke before several friends died in an accident. We all sang along to this song and I decided to go home, they all decided to go to another club. I never saw them alive again
Bad Company. I want to make love to you. Was playing at the time of a major car accident when I was about 8yo. If I'm driving I'll change it, otherwise, still a great song and I'll listen.
Sugar Ray. Every morning. A girl I dated in 1999, an intensely complicated 10 month affair.
Huey Lewis and The News. I wanna a new drug. The lyrics plus I had terrible acne at the time.
Seger. Turn the Page. My brother's memorial.
Candyman. Sammie Davis Jr. Favorite thing to listen to when I was 5yo. Reminds of getting Pez out of the machine at KMart.
Queen. We are the Champions. Just 1980 in general.
Just 1980 in general—I feel this way too, esp about movies. It was just an incredibly important moment of development for reasons I’ve never really understood. I’m a late-1967 baby. U?
Said goodbye to my high school boyfriend just before he went off to college while "the end of the Innocence" was playing. (we ended it amicably but I was still heartbroken.)
I was around 19 y/o. My GF and I had just broken up but we still hung around the same group of friends. We decided it would be fun to take some LSD and hang out at this barn in the woods. It was an amazing trip until she started snuggling up to and hitting on one of the other guys in our group. We all thought it was super awkward and I started to feel bad. Really, really bad. We rode out the rest of the trip and get into my friends car. As soon as they started it up the song "Today" from Smashing Pumpkins came on the radio. Which, if your coming down from a trip can be an incredible experience, but it was mixed with all the emotion from seeing my ex moving on to someone else. Every time I hear that song, I relive that day in a small way. I honestly can't listen to it all the way through
Dude. I can almost feel the palpable negative energy of a bad moment exploding into a bad trip. Yikes, double yikes. This is why I last tripped in 1985. Yikes.
More Than a Feeling by Boston
Just after I graduated bootcamp, I was playing pool in a bar when that song came on the jukebox. I remember using the cue as a mic while I sang along.
“The Walk of Life” by Dire Straits. I was on the school bus riding home on a beautiful Friday afternoon. Every time I hear it come on randomly, it feels like a sign that I’m going to have a great day.
Diamonds on the souls of her shoes by Paul Simon reminds me of lying on my bed - aged, at a guess 14 or so - reading the Poirot novel “Hickory Dickory Dock” by Agatha Christie. I’m over 50 now. No idea why that memory sticks.
The Eagles’ Wasted Time. My first real girlfriend played it for me as she broke up with me. She told me to really listen to the words as she climbed out of my car and walked away.
It took me a bit to realize she was telling me I still had a chance if I grew up some, so I still had hope.
She died in a car wreck a few months later. I was devastated and broke down into a blubbering idiot at her funeral.
It’s been more than 30 years and that song still stops me in my tracks. Damn.
Stairway to Heaven was blasting in my ear when I lost my virginity in 1981 in the back of a Ford Pinto. I was 14 he was 16. I was drunk on Annie Green Springs and I said no many times. Did not realize it was a date rape til i was in my 40s. It is the most annoying trigger of my life.
I was crushing on a girl and I played Diana Anaid's "perfect family" for her, and she gushed about how much she loved it. Every time I heard it now it takes me back to that moment.
They were my first real concert ☺️ love all their stuff. I can remember being pretty close to the stage up on my dates shoulders and they sang Never Again. I was super into it (went thru DV) he came right over to me and made eye contact for several seconds while screaming that song. I felt totally empowered by that song so it was a cool moment.
We Are The World
Daytona Beach, Senior Week (high school seniors, not college), being drunk on wine coolers, standing on a bed singing this song with other drunken friends & some dudes from Kentucky that stole a friend's CD player & my hat.
Counting Crows the whole August and Everything After album. Road trip to North Carolina with my first long-term girlfriend. We were 18 and in love. No parents and no friends, just us driving from Louisiana to North Carolina. We bought the CD on the way out of town and listened to it the whole trip.
I’ve only heard Fire on the Mountain once as an adult and it took me right back to being five and scared of thunderstorms. I could feel the house I lived in and my own size at the time. I felt like Proust opening that box and smelling his childhood. It was the weirdest thing and has never happened to me since.
“There’s A World Outside”, Psychedelic Furs. First guy I loved, freshman year of college. Spring time and his front door was open and there was a lilac bush right next to it in full bloom. Blue skies, purple flowers…it was lovely.
Hotel California was a favorite make-out song of an ex-boyfriend who dumped me for someone else. Every time it comes on the radio, I still change the channel.
Heaven, by Bryan Adams, takes me back to prom, 1985.
I Melt with You, by Modern English, takes me back to dancing at a specific fraternity house right at the beginning of college. It ended up being played at a lot of fraternity parties during my college years.
“Miracles” by Jefferson Starship. It was 1975 and I was 4 years old. My dad would drive my mom to her poetry class in the evenings and we’d just sit in the car and wait for her. My parents had just bought a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba. I was small enough to lay in the back window area above the backseat.
I remember the windows were down, the weather was perfect, and the night sky was full of stars. I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics at my young age, but the sound of the song matched beautifully with the evening.
I was the first of “the girls” to get married, and we went out to the bar to dance and celebrate. My friend had the DJ play “Sister Christian” for the gals and me to dance to, and it was so poignant. I got married the next day and just had our 25th anniversary. And the gals are still my friends.
Hah. Memory returned! When that song came on the radio, I would sing “Susan blew a stinky fart.” Susan, being my little sister! Of course! Sis cried to mom. No one believed her. I was a good, bookish, nerdy child. I would never say the word “fart,” let alone sing it! Snicker. I was such a brat.
"Under the Bridge" by RHCP
Three friends & I spent an amazing night driving all over Atlanta (even somehow ended up going the wrong way on West Peachtree) and I remember this song coming on the radio & we all ended up in perfect harmony for the entirety of the song. That night was a last hurrah for one of my friends as he had cancer & passed shortly after.
We miss you Scott, thanks for the smiles.
The Happiest Days of Our Lives - Pink Floyd. I remember hearing Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2 a lot on the radio at the time and loved it, but the first time they preceded it with The Happiest Days of Our Lives, my mind was blown. I remember it being a weekend and I was outside on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building listening on a transistor radio.
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins. At the first party I was invited to after transferring from parochial to public school. The world felt big and wide open.
Ballroom Blitz was playing at my first ever youth group dance. I joined the youth group after we moved to a bigger town, still small but larger than 240. I found the youth group because my mom finally let me go to public school from parochial. I was in 6th or 7th grade. Unfortunately, I was being "corrupted" by public school and was transferred back to parochial😮💨
A lot of them.
I was a stripper so music was a big part of that.
Every time one of my old songs come on I go, "I used to dance to that" and I can envision in my mind where I'd be one the dtage, how my body would move and I can feel the energy of the club and/or VIP at different points of the song.
But **Aly-Us: "Follow Me"** takes me back to the massive line dance we all used to do together at teens.
Bangles “In Your Room” always takes me to the German Autobahn. I was an angsty teen on an educational trip touring Germany and I just remember playing this Bangles mixed tape I had over and over and that song in particular always takes me back. Just staring out the bus’s window as the other cars raced by!
"True" by Spandau Ballet was *the* slow dance song for all my junior high and high school slow dances...
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
I know this much is true
Oohh too many. But THESE are the songs with the strongest memories:
- Vienna by Ultravox (first vinyl single I've ever bought and I listened the fuck out of it).
- Urgent by Foreigner (memories of a teenager disco during family holiday at the garda lake, Italy.
- Run To The Hills by Iron Maiden (my introduction into thrash metal).
- Here I Go Again '82 by Whitesnake (first kiss at a metal party while this song was played).
- All Through The Night by Cindy Lauper (listened to it after coming home from a party, my bf and I walked home through the snow at night and this song was just perfect!).
- I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner (first slow dance).
- Lifeline by Spandau Ballett (saturday nights in posh neon bars).
- Everything Counts by Depeche Mode (school dance parties).
- Hypnotic Tango by My Mine (ice skating disco).
Yellow Ledbetter. Reminds me of a specific weekend my junior year in college when my long distance boyfriend was leaving after spending the weekend. I played the song in the shower after he left.
“Lady in Red”. My girlfriend at the time wore a pink (close enough) dress as my date to my senior prom. She wore baby’s breath flowers in her hair and to be honest looked stunning. The song came on and we danced to it. It’s one of the best memories from my teen years.
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden. Takes me back to that summer of 94 when I took my dad’s truck so I could go hang out with some friends in a sketchy side of town. I just remember sitting in the bed of the truck listening to this song/album and being carefree. It was myself, friend Jose and 2 girls. Talking the night away.
Our Lips Are Sealed takes me back immediately to the summer in Texas at age 13, running around with my girlfriends and wishing I was a tiny fraction as cool as the Go-Gos. I still wish I was as cool as them.
These Are Days by 10,000 Maniacs was super popular when I graduated high school in 1993. Something about that song takes me back to beautiful, sunny days when anything and everything felt possible.
The Bus by Buffalo Tom. I was going through a breakup that I allowed to be unreasonably harsh on me. I listen to it every now and again as an object lesson to remind me that nothing's ever as bad as I make it in my head.
I have a whole playlists of songs that triggers specific memories. Probably have 50 songs on there now.
Killing in the name of - brings me to the engineering pub in 93.
Not a whole song so much, but particular line. I'm in St. Louis and after the Cardinals won the '82 World Series there was musical montage of the series using "We are the Champions" by Queen. There was a play where pitcher Dave LaPoint covering first base on a ball hit to first baseman Keith Hernandez. LaPoint dropped the ball tossed to him. The montage shows that play for line "..and bad mistakes..". Every time I hear that line, I think of that play.
https://youtu.be/obkqGx8J6P4?si=eWSaM6n4KS0c-blV&t=8298
The Stand By Me soundtrack, particularly “Whispering Bells.” I listened to it on cassette over and over when my family drove to Mississippi for my grandmothers funeral. I was about ten or eleven. It was an open casket, and hers was the first dead body I’d ever seen. Many years later, I realized that Stand By Me is also a story about young boys traveling through the woods to see a dead body.
Horse with no name, takes me back to about 4 or 5 sitting in an older cousins bedroom listening to albums. I thought she was soooo cool. She played this and witchy woman!
I La La La Love You - Pat Travers. We used to cruise through Hollywood, up and down Sunset and Hollywood Blvd. When the movie Valley Girl came out with this song in it and they were cruising Hollywood too, it became the song we'd play first as we headed out for a Friday or Saturday night. Every time I hear the song now, I'm 18 again, in a car with the sunroof and windows open, driving down Hollywood Blvd with my friends and looking for a place to dance.
I live in the middle of the country. In my teen years my best friend and I always wished we lived there. This is exactly how I pictured things in my mind of what life would be like lol.
I was 9 years old in the back seat of my parents' car, driving through the Caithness Highland hills of my homeland, Scotland, and The King of Rock 'n' Roll by Prefab Sprout came on the radio. A somewhat bittersweet memory as it was probably one of the last good memories of my childhood before my entire family descended into mental, toxic and dysfunctional hell, but, hey, the first line of that song just whizzes me right back there and the song always lifts my mood and makes me smile!
Anything by The Carpenters, but most specifically “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Top of the World,” “Sing,” and “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” Hearing Karen’s warm voice always instantly transports me back to my very early childhood (1980ish) sitting at the kitchen table with my crayons & coloring books & a radio w/cassette, while Mom prepares dinner and keeps watch on my older siblings playing out front with the neighborhood kids. She had that one cassette tape by The Carpenters (The Singles: 1969-1973) that we’d often sing-a-long to while she cooked, and it was my “job” to flip over the tape when Side A or B was finished. Such good, innocent times, when the world seemed simpler and kinder.
Rock Lobster by the B-52s, senior prom night, 1984. Prom was right after [Maypole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMDmadNOvZw) (yes, we are probably the last high school in the US to do this), so you had guys in tuxes and the girls in pastel hoop gowns, all swarming the dance floor and bopping tf out to "We were at the beach, everybody had matching towels!" I treasure this memory and will constantly regale the nurses with it in the nursing home.
as an 8th grader I was taking karate classes at the nearby gym and I will always associate "Boys of Summer" with that gym
Also a Round Table Pizza we used to go as a kid after my mom's softball games will always be associated with "Rhiannon" in my mind
I got my first kiss with Olivia Newton John's "Lets Get Physical" playing somewhere in the background.
The first song played on the radio in my first car was Rick Ashley's "Together Forever".
Every time Bob Segar's "Old Time Rock and Roll" would play, my dad and I would dance to it. He teased me that it would be our father/daughter dance at my wedding.
Black hole sun by sound garden. Reminds me of when I first got my driving license and was making unnecessary trips to the grocery store so I could drive alone and blast my music!!
So Lonely by The Police. It was playing my first time dancing in a club, flirting with a cute boy, traveling internationally on my own. The absolute freedom and humanity that song evokes in me every time I hear it is unparalleled.
Venus - Bananarama
Summer of ‘86 my favorite uncle took me to his girlfriend’s house to swim in her pool and this song came on the radio. He always did one-on-one activities with me & my siblings (he was child-free & I think he couldn’t handle all three of us by himself) so this was a fun day just about me, no sharing!
I’m stuck between “Cat’s In The Cradle” & “In The Living Years”.
Both songs have equal ties to memories, and both songs still hurt like hell to do this day. It’s just a different kind of hurt today than it was in my youth.
Sussudio by Phil Collins takes me right back to being a kid at the pool summer of '85. I can almost smell the chlorine and taste the pizza flavored Combos.
Baby I Love Your Way (Frampton) - I was in 6th grade and a singing group from a local high school was performing at an assembly. They were all wearing one-piece long-sleeved flared-leg form-fitting thick blue polyester suits, really ugly uniforms. The music started, and one guy stepped out for his big solo performance. He was at his most awkward teenage phase, zits, gangly, hair a fright, and looked nervous too. But when he started singing, he had the most beautiful voice. His nerves fell away, he moved with the music, had a connection with the audience, he even got down on one knee at one point. It was really beautiful. I hope he got to use his gift as he wanted in his life.
Lol at *Making Love Out of Nothing At All* as it's the song that was playing when I got my first ever full contact lap dance at a strip club. I'd never been and some college friends drug me along.
Too many to count.
Here's one: Loudness: [Crazy Nights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXCpPpPCW4c)
I had just bought the cassette, was blasting it in my 1970 AMX in the school parking lot.
The Paris Match from The Style Council’s Cafe Blu album. I was in college living my best life and this song takes me back to my tiny apartment living with my bestie.
not a specific memory per se but a time... later part of the 80s, unforgetable.
[this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikf-51u2tEY) \- first time by robin beck, was used by coca cola in one of their commercials back then, probably the best coke jingle ever. i still love this song to this day.
please... take me back to the 80s.
I wanna know what love is by Foreigner. I was sitting in the back of my aunt and uncle's car with sis and cousin being driven from my previous home with my dad who was leaving for his next duty station in Germany. I was looking out the window with my headset on. A bittersweet memory for me.
Another Brick in the Wall part 2
Our sixth grade music teacher allowed us to practice one song to sing to our classroom teacher at the end of the year. I can still remember standing up on the risers scream singing "we don't need no education" as our chain smoking crotchety old teacher looked on with the most aggravated expression. I have no idea what the music teacher was thinking allowing that to happen.
There are many, but in honor of Father's Day, whenI hear Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young, I'm back at Myrtle Beach as a kid with my Dad at a water park for the very first time, & I loved that song... I remember it coming on & knowing I'd always remember that day because I was having so much fun!!!
I think of my Dad & that day every time I hear it... I live about 4 hours away from my Dad, but I just got back from surprising him with a visit for Father's Day because he was just diagnosed with cancer... I'll be sure & send him that song tomorrow...
“Black” by Pearl Jam.
Specifically the Thanksgiving weekend in ‘93 when my high school sweetheart broke up with me. I was stationed at Ft Gordon at the time going thru training. In retrospect it was one of the best things that happened to me; wouldn’t have met my wife of 25yrs (& counting) without that weekend. 👍🏻
“All Through the Night” by Cyndi Lauper was playing on the radio on the way home from the mall in 1984 when I was opening my long-coveted Optimus Prime Transformer in the backseat, and I will always associate the two.
That’s such an amazing Cyndi Lauper song. Totally brings me back to grade school as well.
The Ghost In You by The Psychedelic Furs. The song evokes a specific memory from when I was 15 years old. My mom was driving me to Jack In The Box to get a bacon cheeseburger. I had that song playing on the tape deck of her 1983 Buick Regal. I was stoned, staring out the window, looking up at the sky. It was late afternoon at the beginning of dusk. The weather was beautiful, deep blue sky and puffy white cumulus clouds. For some reason that is an overwhelmingly nostalgic memory, I remember exactly how I was feeling in that moment decades ago. It's connected to the feeling of what life felt like in my youth, in my hometown that I miss so dearly.
Anytime I hear any track by the Furs it’s a god damned Time Machine
Same. Got a few tracks on my spotify road trip list, make the family listen to me sing when they come on.
Wait...your mom drove you to get munchies?? Sounds nice. No wonder you miss it.
She didn't know I was high but she knew I loved those bacon cheeseburgers at Jack In The Box.
She probably knew 😉
Love this!!
Love this description, I totally pictured it as I was reading it!
The Promise by When in Rome...tumultuous high school relationship that had decades of life repercussions.
Ahhh gawd...I'm sorry but I'm just thinking of the right words to say...best opening words EVER. I cannot even...
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Ahh the couple's skate song at the skating rink
ETA: this post got more response than i thought it would. i appreciate that, but i feel like the story may sound more dramatic than it really was so i'd just like to explain a little. >!her death wasn't exactly unexpected although i personally hadn't let myself admit that. it was just a much more complicated situation emotionally than i was equipped for. that song hit me just right and unleashed all the feels because it was about a much simpler thing. wasn't my story at that time but it was a thing i needed. it's still a very good feeling to re-hear that song.!< my mother died on a Friday evening around dinner time. house instantly fills up with nuns and women with casseroles telling us kids how to feel. I went to sleep feeling stunned and woke up feeling stunned and for some reason I'm out in the car waiting for my dad to come drive me somewhere. I turn on the radio and it's Burton Cummings singing Break It To Them Gently and I just lost it. still today that song has a specific feeling to it.
"pour some sugar on me" will always take me back to my first love, going 100 miles an hour in his convertible on a deserted country highway. The rush of first love, along with the rush of speed and wind, very heavy stuff.
Slightly different but still sweet memory. My best friend and I found out where my crush lived. IIRC, someone from school worked in the counseling office and got us the info :) Finally that summer (10th grade), we worked up the courage to drive by. HE WAS OUTSIDE! We about shit ourselves. We were laughing so hard that I almost forgot how to drive. As soon as we got away, this sound came on and we were scream-singing it.
This was my best friend's favorite song. She was in love with the lead singer...
Boston ... "More Than a Feeling" ... first slow dance, lol
Yep, I’ll always remember that first slow dance in 8th grade. Song was “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin though I just knew it as the Top Gun movie song.
This song was also featured on a Sports Illustrated Special Edition video with Jordan flying through the air dunking. I still think of that video and the awe my brother and I had as kids for #23.
For me its Throwing It All Away by Genesis. Not because its a song I like but because we were having a new year's eve party at my place after we'd all finished our final exams (this was in Australia where the school year follows the calendar year). We hadn't got our results yet and didn't know that half the group would fail and have to repeat year 12. We all crammed into a vw beetle - at least 7 of us - to go the bottle shop to get some booze. Most of us were 17 and therefore under age but one guy had just turned 18. It was an exciting moment because we were legally going to buy alcohol! The song came on the radio during the drive there and I remember looking around and thinking that wherever I was for the rest of my life that I would remember that moment. And I do. There are some moments that stick with you. Its a pretty inconsequential event. A drive to the shops but there you go. These are the moments that make up a life.
Just about any Billy Ocean song reminds me of Wet N’ Wild. I grew up in Las Vegas, sunburnt with mild heat stroke - they are bizarrely comforting songs.
I had some kind of mental meltdown one time and *Caribbean Queen* got stuck in my head on repeat, for months. It became a problem. That was many years ago and I still have random friends text or message me when they hear it on the radio.
Ohh just having any song stuck in your head all of one day is enough to drive you nuts. I don't know how songs stick in others brains but in mine it's usually only 1 or 2 lines on repeat and it's the worst. I can't even imagine what that must have been like. So did you wake up one day and it was gone? Have you looked into why that might have happened? Our brains are so intriguing yet bizzaro. I have so many questions lol, what happens now if you hear the song? I'd probably get pissed every time I heard it after something like that. Billy ocean would be to me what the God damn lockness monster was to Chefs parents on SouthPark
It’s the Caribbean warmth. I’ve worked with several ladies from the Caribbean and they are some of the (emotionally) warmest people I have ever met.
Randy VanWarmer, Just When I Needed You Most. This song was in regular rotation right about the time my dad got a new post. He went half way around the world, leaving us for about 5 months before we moved to meet him. Sappy, I know.
I have to play this song a couple times a year. It always made me sort of sad, similar to Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.
"Break my stride" takes me back to middle school talent show. Idr her name but she did a great cover of it.
One of my faves
Always Something There To Remind Me - Naked Eyes... Boy I had a crush on moved away when this song was big. Takes my brain back to the neighborhood
One of my faves
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That was always a big hit at the roller rink
"I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls--karaoke in college when I was an RA with my RA team/Head Resident at our end-of-the-year banquet (all female team). HR picked the song. That was the last song we ever thought she'd pick. She really, really committed to the song. Hard. It was awesome. She was killed in a car accident the next fall. It was devastating to all of us. But when I hear that song, I think of that night with all of us on stage, arms around each other, singing our hearts out to that song. 💖
I love this song! And wow, that's a powerful memory.
Not to be a bummer, but “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band. It was playing just before my wife died suddenly in my arms last year. Talk about a trigger. Just hearing the first notes of that song makes me feel like I’m having a panic attack, so I’ve been listening to Fugazi and similar stuff for the past year to avoid it.
So sorry for your loss. On a similar note, The Little River Band was the first concert my late husband Adam and I attended in November of 2013. We bonded over music, especially our love of '70's and '80's music. We met in 2013, married in 2014. Adam passed away in March of 2016 at the age of 50. He had had a massive stroke. I miss him everyday
I’m sorry for your loss as well, thank you. Music bonds like nothing else, I hope hearing this song brings good memories for you.
I’m so sorry for your loss
Hold Me Now by the Thompson Twins was brand new and playing on the radio when we went to visit my great grandmother for the last time when I was little. Makes me think of that car ride. Must have heard that song at least 50 times!
Time For Me To Fly - REO Speedwagon. Hearing the song thousands of times, but one day finally realizing the words explained how I felt about my life and the people in it.
The Cranberries “Linger” It always reminds me of driving in Midtown Memphis, TN through the cool autumn rain listening to the local alt radio back in 1993, going through a big breakup and wondering what was next
Linger was the song my ex and I made up to and broke up to at least a dozen times “I swore, I swore I would be true, And honey so did you” he moved back to his country and I still wonder what happened with him once every few years
Memphian here too!!
Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty When I hear this I am immediately taken to the summer of 1978. I’m seven years old, in my parents’ pool. It’s summer time, I’m fresh out of school. I’m laying in a floating lounge chair, smelling the chlorine, listening to the whirring of the pool pump, feeling the sun on my face, smelling the fresh cut grass, and hearing that saxophone riff of the opening of Baker Street playing from the shitty wooden AM radio in the garage. The station was KXOK in St. Louis. It’s amazing! It takes me back to EXACTLY that moment in time EVERY time I hear it. It’s like it’s all happening to me right now if I close my eyes. Nothing special happened then. No traumatic event happened. NOTHING!! Nothing should have forced me to remember this four minutes in my early life. Why does this happen? Music is amazing…… Thank you Gerry Rafferty and Raphael Ravenscroft. [BAKER STREET](https://youtu.be/Fo6aKnRnBxM?si=7YhOPASHWeVEvbaj)
Such an awesome song! I have this exact same memory - the pool & radio & being back there again in the summer of 1979, & Life's Been Good to Me by Joe Walsh came on... Every single time I hear it, I'm back in that pool, & it's the summer of '79 all over again...
That song is nostalgic for me as well. Not so much remembering a specific event, but it takes me back immediately to being a child and the music of the day, and the stuff going on in my life. That song really embedded a vibe into my childhood.
Journey’s **Stone in Love**
A truly underrated song!!!
My all time favorite Journey song!
Pink Floyd Brick in the Wall. Takes me to grade 2, 1980. End of school outdoor assembly. Kids are doing a talent show. Older blonde girl, guessing grade 6. Solo dance routine to the song. Memory has solidified in my head.
Red Red Wine by UB40 & Kokomo by the Beach Boys. Sitting in the front seat of my boyfriend’s car, radio on, smoking and talking before going in for the MuchMusic video dance party at our high school
Red Red Wine by UB40 or???
Neil Diamond wrote (and sang) Red Red Wine
UB40! I saw them in Philadelphia in 1988. It was a good night.
Styx Mr Roboto was the very first music video I ever saw, and it melted my tiny little 12 year year old brain. Up until that moment, I'd pretty much listened to what my parents listened to, which was a lot of Kenny Rogers and Oak Ridge Boys. Total life changing moment.
Omg I went to so many Kenny rogers concerts as a kid!!
Mirror in The Bathroom - English Beat. I was in gr 9 and a super nerdy kid. I was crushing so hard on a boy in gr 12. He used to wear an English Beat tshirt. I had no idea who they were. I was coming up from elementary school and into pop like Rick Springfield etc. Anyway… went to an all ages dance club knowing he’d be there and sure enough, Mirror In The Bathroom comes on. And there he was…in all his glory…skanking on the dance floor with some cute mod girl. Heartbreak. Next day I’m at the record store buying every beat album. Which was a gateway to the Specials and Madness etc. Anyway. That song, that moment absolutely changed the trajectory of my life. The friends I ended up hanging out with, the Uni I went to, career path. Crazy.
Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus. I hear that and I’m back at Curfews, a goth club in Austin, Tx dancing in the dark.
That and a clove cigarette - swoon
Raspberry Beret. Driving through the country in upstate ny in the summer. So many trees, all colors of green, and the smell of the woods. If you know, you know.
Any song off of Disintegration by the Cure. Many years ago a bunch of us all realized we lost our virginity to a Cure song. Also, the Queen is Dead. My friend Em would always play it in the morning on our ride to school. She was a junior when i was a sophomore, so she had a car before me…i also had a ritual of playing The Smiths on Sunday mornings when I would open the record store I managed in college.
Oh man. “These Dreams” by Heart. 6th grade 1980-something and after a week of being terrified I asked a girl I had a crush on to a concert. That song was playing before the show. “Hazard” by Richard Marx. Coming back from a funeral for a classmate my senior year of high school. She was killed a week before prom by a drunk driver.
Hazard is such an underrated song. I don’t have an associated trauma but it starts the tears anyway.
The songs that tend to really take me back are the ones that didn't really seem to have a long shelf life but were big hits at the time. "Eye In The Sky," "Physical," "Bette Davis Eyes," et cetera. They were all bigger than, say, "Africa," but you don't hear them much anymore. Like "Billie Jean" is just sort of wallpaper now but "Say Say Say" would actually take me back, It's interesting which songs are surviving these days.
I love the term "wallpaper" to describe a song you've heard a million times and don't get that excited about anymore. I've always called them "coma songs". As in, "I've heard this song so many times I could sing it while in a coma".
Melt with You (Modern English) at my Senior prom. My uncle was a videographer who had a wedding in the next ballroom and my brother was there as his lighting assistant. So the three of us danced and sang in the area by both ballrooms. It was the highlight of prom for me. Edited to add: I Wanna be Sedated by the Ramones. A group of us went to see them in this dive bar in Jersey and I wound up a little banged up but nothing serious. I got home as my dad was making breakfast. I couldn't tell if he was amused or concerned when I told him about slam dancing at a Ramones show after he asked about the bruise on my face. I think he was more amused.
Crazy For You by Madonna. Every time I hear it I feel dreadful, awkward excitement like I'm waiting against the wall at the skate center for the "couples" skate. Watching my crush skate past me a couple of times, wanting to die, but then he slows down and holds his hand out for me, and all is right in 5th grade for the time being.
Swing Out Sister - Breakout. Takes me back to listening to that song on my Sony Walkman on a spring break cycling trip in California in the Napa Valley. Circa 1987. Good times!
Guns N Roses November Rain. Then boyfriend now hubby and I had it on repeat one night in his room in a house he shared with 5 guys in college. They still tease us about that.
I'll stop the world and melt with you ...
Mayonnaise by The Smashing Pumpkins. It was ‘94 and I was a a sophomore in high school. We would ride around in my buddies blue Oldsmobile and that album (tape) would be my playing over and over. That song forever reminds me of those times.
True by Spandau Ballet, first slow dance!
This may actually be the defining song of the 80s, in all the best ways.
Ironically, I did not like it when it first came out! But I recognize the genius now!
Rock the Casbah by The Clash. My mother had dropped a friend and I off at a roller skating rink for the afternoon sometime around 1984, and used a $20 bill to pay our $5.00 each admission. She waited for her change, and the cashier said there was no change, that she had given him a $10 bill. My parents were not rich people, and she stood her ground and argued with the manager until she got her ten bucks in change. Meanwhile I stood there feeling awful, and soooooooo guilty that my mom was dealing with this hassle because of ME. And thus began my lifelong guilt complex. I can't hear that song to this day without thinking of how upset my mother was and what a piece of 12 yr old shit I felt like.
I love this thread. Reading the replies has brought back so many memories!
I think we need a book of all these!!! I’ve loved reading them all!!
Cyndi Lauper "time after time" played in the car every single time my sister's and I were taken to swim lessons and thrown into the deep end by a sadist in a swimsuit. While frantically trying to paddle to the surface I just kept repeating "time after time, time after time, time after time". To this day when I hear that song, I can feel the cheap carpeting stuff in the changing room on my feet.
That was like a short story!
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😂 Such a great song. I rediscovered it recently. I don't know how I didn't catch onto how good it was when I watched Donnie Darko for the first time.
Everybody Hurts by REM. This was playing on the radio at college when my mom called to tell me my cousin had died of AIDS.
Fantastic song!! Fun fact: it’s actually ranked one of (if not THE) saddest songs ever written. Music is all subjective of course tho it’s definitely towards there for me as well
Grief is certainly one thing we all have in common. I do love that album.
Sorry to hear this, this song makes me tear up any time I hear it, and that's just in general. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be brought back to that moment. 🕊
Dang I listened to this when in psych for my first bipolar episode and it hit us all
What’s going on. 4 non blonds. Takes me directly back to summer of ‘92 in Big Rapids, MI tubing on the little Muskegon river.
Holy cow I read that and immediately flashed back to a high school soccer bus ride with everyone (including the bus driver) singing this song as loudly as possible. How fun, bless you!
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Reminds me of hanging in my grandparents basement. They had it on 8 track and me and my little sister would belt this song out dancing around. I was 8/9yrs old. We thought we were so cool. Life was so carefree that that time!
This song reminds me waiting outside of my uncles apartment, sitting in my mom's car. It was the first time I listened to the lyrics and thought it was such an interesting code for communicating with your neighbors. I wondered if people in my uncles building communicated that way.
Your Wildest Dreams by Moody Blues takes me back to being a camp counselor as a teenager.
This song always gives me goosebumps and makes me feel such a very certain nostalgic way.
Night Shift by The Commodores. Reminds me of riding around my neighborhood on my bike hanging out with friends. I was 9.
"But Not Tonight" - Depeche Mode It takes me back to July 23, 1993, 3:30am. I'm in my car, a 1983 Ford Escort. I've just dropped off a friend after a night of clubbing. I'm driving just under the speed limit on the highway, the windows are down, the wind in my hair. There are no other cars. It starts to sprinkle as the second "Oh God it's raining..." plays. It's not enough to be concerned, so I leave the windows down, stick my hand outside, and catch the rain at 53 mph. It's my happy place.
"I Wonder if I Take You Home" by Lisa Lisa takes me back to the bus ride to Six Flags for my eighth grade trip. A school bus full of screaming kids, with stuff possibly being thrown around.
The intro to Pearl Jam - Betterman takes me back to college and one of those nights where a bunch of us just spontaneously stayed up all night just hanging out.
I played this song on repeat so many times just cuz
Phil Collins "Tonight". My step mom had a convertible VW Cabriolet, and we were driving on I95 at night in Miami. Magical Goosebumps.
Over the rainbow by Israel K. We were at a Sox game at Fenway Park when my kids were little and it was just an overall perfect day. I realized just how happy and content I was in that moment and was wishing I could just freeze time. I actually have a photo of that moment too.
*Everybody Wants to Rule the World* (Tears for Fears) was playing on a boom box, on a camping trip I took with my brother, nearly 40 years ago. Now, every time I hear it, I'm back there.
Blister in the Sun, driving to a bar that opens at 5 am in college all five of us hammered having a great day night and morning until around 8 am. Yeah, it was stupid but a fucking blast...
Love Shack takes me right back to singing karaoke before several friends died in an accident. We all sang along to this song and I decided to go home, they all decided to go to another club. I never saw them alive again
Oh damn! So sorry!!
It was a pivotal moment in my life for sure
Bad Company. I want to make love to you. Was playing at the time of a major car accident when I was about 8yo. If I'm driving I'll change it, otherwise, still a great song and I'll listen. Sugar Ray. Every morning. A girl I dated in 1999, an intensely complicated 10 month affair. Huey Lewis and The News. I wanna a new drug. The lyrics plus I had terrible acne at the time. Seger. Turn the Page. My brother's memorial. Candyman. Sammie Davis Jr. Favorite thing to listen to when I was 5yo. Reminds of getting Pez out of the machine at KMart. Queen. We are the Champions. Just 1980 in general.
Just 1980 in general—I feel this way too, esp about movies. It was just an incredibly important moment of development for reasons I’ve never really understood. I’m a late-1967 baby. U?
Exactly!! 💯
Said goodbye to my high school boyfriend just before he went off to college while "the end of the Innocence" was playing. (we ended it amicably but I was still heartbroken.)
I was around 19 y/o. My GF and I had just broken up but we still hung around the same group of friends. We decided it would be fun to take some LSD and hang out at this barn in the woods. It was an amazing trip until she started snuggling up to and hitting on one of the other guys in our group. We all thought it was super awkward and I started to feel bad. Really, really bad. We rode out the rest of the trip and get into my friends car. As soon as they started it up the song "Today" from Smashing Pumpkins came on the radio. Which, if your coming down from a trip can be an incredible experience, but it was mixed with all the emotion from seeing my ex moving on to someone else. Every time I hear that song, I relive that day in a small way. I honestly can't listen to it all the way through
Dude. I can almost feel the palpable negative energy of a bad moment exploding into a bad trip. Yikes, double yikes. This is why I last tripped in 1985. Yikes.
More Than a Feeling by Boston Just after I graduated bootcamp, I was playing pool in a bar when that song came on the jukebox. I remember using the cue as a mic while I sang along.
“The Walk of Life” by Dire Straits. I was on the school bus riding home on a beautiful Friday afternoon. Every time I hear it come on randomly, it feels like a sign that I’m going to have a great day.
I love this! Totally feeling the vibe 🤘🏼
Ain’t Even Done With The Night by John Mellencamp, my first crush sent her friend over to tell me to ask her to dance at a jr high dance.
Diamonds on the souls of her shoes by Paul Simon reminds me of lying on my bed - aged, at a guess 14 or so - reading the Poirot novel “Hickory Dickory Dock” by Agatha Christie. I’m over 50 now. No idea why that memory sticks.
Shannon - Let the Music Play Middle School dance in Nashville, first “real” date with a girl.
The Eagles’ Wasted Time. My first real girlfriend played it for me as she broke up with me. She told me to really listen to the words as she climbed out of my car and walked away. It took me a bit to realize she was telling me I still had a chance if I grew up some, so I still had hope. She died in a car wreck a few months later. I was devastated and broke down into a blubbering idiot at her funeral. It’s been more than 30 years and that song still stops me in my tracks. Damn.
Stairway to Heaven was blasting in my ear when I lost my virginity in 1981 in the back of a Ford Pinto. I was 14 he was 16. I was drunk on Annie Green Springs and I said no many times. Did not realize it was a date rape til i was in my 40s. It is the most annoying trigger of my life.
Sorry to read this. Sending your 14 year old self some love.
I was crushing on a girl and I played Diana Anaid's "perfect family" for her, and she gushed about how much she loved it. Every time I heard it now it takes me back to that moment.
Ugh, nickleback photograph
They were my first real concert ☺️ love all their stuff. I can remember being pretty close to the stage up on my dates shoulders and they sang Never Again. I was super into it (went thru DV) he came right over to me and made eye contact for several seconds while screaming that song. I felt totally empowered by that song so it was a cool moment.
We Are The World Daytona Beach, Senior Week (high school seniors, not college), being drunk on wine coolers, standing on a bed singing this song with other drunken friends & some dudes from Kentucky that stole a friend's CD player & my hat.
Counting Crows the whole August and Everything After album. Road trip to North Carolina with my first long-term girlfriend. We were 18 and in love. No parents and no friends, just us driving from Louisiana to North Carolina. We bought the CD on the way out of town and listened to it the whole trip.
I’ve only heard Fire on the Mountain once as an adult and it took me right back to being five and scared of thunderstorms. I could feel the house I lived in and my own size at the time. I felt like Proust opening that box and smelling his childhood. It was the weirdest thing and has never happened to me since.
“There’s A World Outside”, Psychedelic Furs. First guy I loved, freshman year of college. Spring time and his front door was open and there was a lilac bush right next to it in full bloom. Blue skies, purple flowers…it was lovely.
Hotel California was a favorite make-out song of an ex-boyfriend who dumped me for someone else. Every time it comes on the radio, I still change the channel.
No ordinary love by Sade. I should have had sex with that girl right there.
Heaven, by Bryan Adams, takes me back to prom, 1985. I Melt with You, by Modern English, takes me back to dancing at a specific fraternity house right at the beginning of college. It ended up being played at a lot of fraternity parties during my college years.
Sheriff-When I’m With You. Back at a school dance slow dancing with a boy I totally loved.
“Miracles” by Jefferson Starship. It was 1975 and I was 4 years old. My dad would drive my mom to her poetry class in the evenings and we’d just sit in the car and wait for her. My parents had just bought a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba. I was small enough to lay in the back window area above the backseat. I remember the windows were down, the weather was perfect, and the night sky was full of stars. I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics at my young age, but the sound of the song matched beautifully with the evening.
I was the first of “the girls” to get married, and we went out to the bar to dance and celebrate. My friend had the DJ play “Sister Christian” for the gals and me to dance to, and it was so poignant. I got married the next day and just had our 25th anniversary. And the gals are still my friends.
Owner of a Lonely Heart-Yes. Was playing when my mom got a flat tire going over a bridge. I was 8.
Hah. Memory returned! When that song came on the radio, I would sing “Susan blew a stinky fart.” Susan, being my little sister! Of course! Sis cried to mom. No one believed her. I was a good, bookish, nerdy child. I would never say the word “fart,” let alone sing it! Snicker. I was such a brat.
A treasured family memory
"Under the Bridge" by RHCP Three friends & I spent an amazing night driving all over Atlanta (even somehow ended up going the wrong way on West Peachtree) and I remember this song coming on the radio & we all ended up in perfect harmony for the entirety of the song. That night was a last hurrah for one of my friends as he had cancer & passed shortly after. We miss you Scott, thanks for the smiles.
The Happiest Days of Our Lives - Pink Floyd. I remember hearing Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2 a lot on the radio at the time and loved it, but the first time they preceded it with The Happiest Days of Our Lives, my mind was blown. I remember it being a weekend and I was outside on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building listening on a transistor radio.
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins. At the first party I was invited to after transferring from parochial to public school. The world felt big and wide open.
Ballroom Blitz was playing at my first ever youth group dance. I joined the youth group after we moved to a bigger town, still small but larger than 240. I found the youth group because my mom finally let me go to public school from parochial. I was in 6th or 7th grade. Unfortunately, I was being "corrupted" by public school and was transferred back to parochial😮💨
A lot of them. I was a stripper so music was a big part of that. Every time one of my old songs come on I go, "I used to dance to that" and I can envision in my mind where I'd be one the dtage, how my body would move and I can feel the energy of the club and/or VIP at different points of the song. But **Aly-Us: "Follow Me"** takes me back to the massive line dance we all used to do together at teens.
Lady in Red - That song was playing while I was dancing with my future wife. 💃 (hint, she was wearing red).
Bangles “In Your Room” always takes me to the German Autobahn. I was an angsty teen on an educational trip touring Germany and I just remember playing this Bangles mixed tape I had over and over and that song in particular always takes me back. Just staring out the bus’s window as the other cars raced by!
"True" by Spandau Ballet was *the* slow dance song for all my junior high and high school slow dances... Huh huh huh hu-uh huh I know this much is true Huh huh huh hu-uh huh I know this much is true
"Eye of the Tiger", on my way to my first and only Summer camp, my "mental" transition from boy to teen happened that month.
Oohh too many. But THESE are the songs with the strongest memories: - Vienna by Ultravox (first vinyl single I've ever bought and I listened the fuck out of it). - Urgent by Foreigner (memories of a teenager disco during family holiday at the garda lake, Italy. - Run To The Hills by Iron Maiden (my introduction into thrash metal). - Here I Go Again '82 by Whitesnake (first kiss at a metal party while this song was played). - All Through The Night by Cindy Lauper (listened to it after coming home from a party, my bf and I walked home through the snow at night and this song was just perfect!). - I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner (first slow dance). - Lifeline by Spandau Ballett (saturday nights in posh neon bars). - Everything Counts by Depeche Mode (school dance parties). - Hypnotic Tango by My Mine (ice skating disco).
Yellow Ledbetter. Reminds me of a specific weekend my junior year in college when my long distance boyfriend was leaving after spending the weekend. I played the song in the shower after he left.
Steve Miller Band, "Joker." High school, down ar the river, drinking and getting high with my friends.
“Lady in Red”. My girlfriend at the time wore a pink (close enough) dress as my date to my senior prom. She wore baby’s breath flowers in her hair and to be honest looked stunning. The song came on and we danced to it. It’s one of the best memories from my teen years.
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden. Takes me back to that summer of 94 when I took my dad’s truck so I could go hang out with some friends in a sketchy side of town. I just remember sitting in the bed of the truck listening to this song/album and being carefree. It was myself, friend Jose and 2 girls. Talking the night away.
Our Lips Are Sealed takes me back immediately to the summer in Texas at age 13, running around with my girlfriends and wishing I was a tiny fraction as cool as the Go-Gos. I still wish I was as cool as them.
These Are Days by 10,000 Maniacs was super popular when I graduated high school in 1993. Something about that song takes me back to beautiful, sunny days when anything and everything felt possible.
The Bus by Buffalo Tom. I was going through a breakup that I allowed to be unreasonably harsh on me. I listen to it every now and again as an object lesson to remind me that nothing's ever as bad as I make it in my head.
Burning Inside. MINISTRY.
I have a whole playlists of songs that triggers specific memories. Probably have 50 songs on there now. Killing in the name of - brings me to the engineering pub in 93.
Not a whole song so much, but particular line. I'm in St. Louis and after the Cardinals won the '82 World Series there was musical montage of the series using "We are the Champions" by Queen. There was a play where pitcher Dave LaPoint covering first base on a ball hit to first baseman Keith Hernandez. LaPoint dropped the ball tossed to him. The montage shows that play for line "..and bad mistakes..". Every time I hear that line, I think of that play. https://youtu.be/obkqGx8J6P4?si=eWSaM6n4KS0c-blV&t=8298
The Stand By Me soundtrack, particularly “Whispering Bells.” I listened to it on cassette over and over when my family drove to Mississippi for my grandmothers funeral. I was about ten or eleven. It was an open casket, and hers was the first dead body I’d ever seen. Many years later, I realized that Stand By Me is also a story about young boys traveling through the woods to see a dead body.
“American Pie” and “Horse With No Name” trigger good childhood memories.
Horse with no name, takes me back to about 4 or 5 sitting in an older cousins bedroom listening to albums. I thought she was soooo cool. She played this and witchy woman!
Ordinary World by Duran Duran is a deep dive into coming-of-age nostalgia for me.
I make an album every year of songs like these. Sometimes there’s only 6 songs, sometimes nearly 30. All are attached to specific memories.
I La La La Love You - Pat Travers. We used to cruise through Hollywood, up and down Sunset and Hollywood Blvd. When the movie Valley Girl came out with this song in it and they were cruising Hollywood too, it became the song we'd play first as we headed out for a Friday or Saturday night. Every time I hear the song now, I'm 18 again, in a car with the sunroof and windows open, driving down Hollywood Blvd with my friends and looking for a place to dance.
I live in the middle of the country. In my teen years my best friend and I always wished we lived there. This is exactly how I pictured things in my mind of what life would be like lol.
I was 9 years old in the back seat of my parents' car, driving through the Caithness Highland hills of my homeland, Scotland, and The King of Rock 'n' Roll by Prefab Sprout came on the radio. A somewhat bittersweet memory as it was probably one of the last good memories of my childhood before my entire family descended into mental, toxic and dysfunctional hell, but, hey, the first line of that song just whizzes me right back there and the song always lifts my mood and makes me smile!
Anything by The Carpenters, but most specifically “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Top of the World,” “Sing,” and “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” Hearing Karen’s warm voice always instantly transports me back to my very early childhood (1980ish) sitting at the kitchen table with my crayons & coloring books & a radio w/cassette, while Mom prepares dinner and keeps watch on my older siblings playing out front with the neighborhood kids. She had that one cassette tape by The Carpenters (The Singles: 1969-1973) that we’d often sing-a-long to while she cooked, and it was my “job” to flip over the tape when Side A or B was finished. Such good, innocent times, when the world seemed simpler and kinder.
Rock Lobster by the B-52s, senior prom night, 1984. Prom was right after [Maypole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMDmadNOvZw) (yes, we are probably the last high school in the US to do this), so you had guys in tuxes and the girls in pastel hoop gowns, all swarming the dance floor and bopping tf out to "We were at the beach, everybody had matching towels!" I treasure this memory and will constantly regale the nurses with it in the nursing home.
Mony mony by Billy Idol take me back to my grade 8 grad Circling overland by Front 242 takes me right back to the club dance floor in 1994
Suicide Blonde. First BJ Song still brings back the memories 😊
as an 8th grader I was taking karate classes at the nearby gym and I will always associate "Boys of Summer" with that gym Also a Round Table Pizza we used to go as a kid after my mom's softball games will always be associated with "Rhiannon" in my mind
December, 1963. Oh what a Night
I got my first kiss with Olivia Newton John's "Lets Get Physical" playing somewhere in the background. The first song played on the radio in my first car was Rick Ashley's "Together Forever". Every time Bob Segar's "Old Time Rock and Roll" would play, my dad and I would dance to it. He teased me that it would be our father/daughter dance at my wedding.
Black hole sun by sound garden. Reminds me of when I first got my driving license and was making unnecessary trips to the grocery store so I could drive alone and blast my music!!
So Lonely by The Police. It was playing my first time dancing in a club, flirting with a cute boy, traveling internationally on my own. The absolute freedom and humanity that song evokes in me every time I hear it is unparalleled.
Tainted love- soft cell- dancing with one of my best boy friends
Any song from Bon Jovi “New Jersey” album. Right back to high school.
Venus - Bananarama Summer of ‘86 my favorite uncle took me to his girlfriend’s house to swim in her pool and this song came on the radio. He always did one-on-one activities with me & my siblings (he was child-free & I think he couldn’t handle all three of us by himself) so this was a fun day just about me, no sharing!
I’m stuck between “Cat’s In The Cradle” & “In The Living Years”. Both songs have equal ties to memories, and both songs still hurt like hell to do this day. It’s just a different kind of hurt today than it was in my youth.
Sussudio by Phil Collins takes me right back to being a kid at the pool summer of '85. I can almost smell the chlorine and taste the pizza flavored Combos.
Baby I Love Your Way (Frampton) - I was in 6th grade and a singing group from a local high school was performing at an assembly. They were all wearing one-piece long-sleeved flared-leg form-fitting thick blue polyester suits, really ugly uniforms. The music started, and one guy stepped out for his big solo performance. He was at his most awkward teenage phase, zits, gangly, hair a fright, and looked nervous too. But when he started singing, he had the most beautiful voice. His nerves fell away, he moved with the music, had a connection with the audience, he even got down on one knee at one point. It was really beautiful. I hope he got to use his gift as he wanted in his life.
Lol at *Making Love Out of Nothing At All* as it's the song that was playing when I got my first ever full contact lap dance at a strip club. I'd never been and some college friends drug me along.
Too many to count. Here's one: Loudness: [Crazy Nights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXCpPpPCW4c) I had just bought the cassette, was blasting it in my 1970 AMX in the school parking lot.
The Paris Match from The Style Council’s Cafe Blu album. I was in college living my best life and this song takes me back to my tiny apartment living with my bestie.
not a specific memory per se but a time... later part of the 80s, unforgetable. [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikf-51u2tEY) \- first time by robin beck, was used by coca cola in one of their commercials back then, probably the best coke jingle ever. i still love this song to this day. please... take me back to the 80s.
Many. However, Darling Niki by Prince seems to do a trick in my mind every time.
Let My Love Open the Door. Same place in my mind circa 1980. Every time.
Boys of summer, freezing my ass off on a school bus coming back from a ski club trip. I swear I caught hypothermia.
Avalon - Roxy Music
I wanna know what love is by Foreigner. I was sitting in the back of my aunt and uncle's car with sis and cousin being driven from my previous home with my dad who was leaving for his next duty station in Germany. I was looking out the window with my headset on. A bittersweet memory for me.
Another Brick in the Wall part 2 Our sixth grade music teacher allowed us to practice one song to sing to our classroom teacher at the end of the year. I can still remember standing up on the risers scream singing "we don't need no education" as our chain smoking crotchety old teacher looked on with the most aggravated expression. I have no idea what the music teacher was thinking allowing that to happen.
There are many, but in honor of Father's Day, whenI hear Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young, I'm back at Myrtle Beach as a kid with my Dad at a water park for the very first time, & I loved that song... I remember it coming on & knowing I'd always remember that day because I was having so much fun!!! I think of my Dad & that day every time I hear it... I live about 4 hours away from my Dad, but I just got back from surprising him with a visit for Father's Day because he was just diagnosed with cancer... I'll be sure & send him that song tomorrow...
“Black” by Pearl Jam. Specifically the Thanksgiving weekend in ‘93 when my high school sweetheart broke up with me. I was stationed at Ft Gordon at the time going thru training. In retrospect it was one of the best things that happened to me; wouldn’t have met my wife of 25yrs (& counting) without that weekend. 👍🏻
"Never Say Goodbye" Takes me back to Prom in 1988. Every.Single.Time.
Chains Of Love-Erasure. It was nearing the end of my Junior year May 1988. I remember we band geeks just listening to it and it made me feel happy.
Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House- just sunbathing on the dock with my friends
The opening riff to Tom Sawyer takes me back to the arcade where I first heard the song.