Guilty Pleasures: My Parents’ Music

I know what you’re thinking, and no, I have not been hitting the NyQuil too hard.

They say that the sense of smell is the sense that is most closely tied to memory, but I’d say hearing, specifically music, comes a close second.  For me at least, music often evokes feelings, phantom emotions from the past.

My main musical lifelines are still mainly the alternative and industrial bands of my teenage years and early twenties; Tool, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, A Perfect Circle.  Hearing that music recalls the bittersweet feelings of a time that was paradoxically simpler, yet more difficult.  It often makes me long for those long gone days.  This is the music which still most strongly affects me, the music with which I still most closely identify, and the music through which I still have a voice for my emotions and ideas.

Though the musical identity I began developing around middle school is markedly different from the music I grew up listening to, my tastes are eclectic enough to leave room for many types of music, and there are more than a few songs that I heard growing up which strike a “memory” chord for me.  My parents’ music.

Some are technically early eighties and nineties pop songs, I suppose, but some are songs I heard when my parents played their records (yes, you read that right) or listened to classic rock and oldies radio stations. 

Many of these songs bring to mind remnants of feelings or thoughts I had at the time, a sort of revival of the ideas I had about the music;  I remember what those songs meant to me through the ears of a child.

And a couple of the songs are associated with television shows or films, and evoke the emotions caused by that particular show.

Here are just a few of those songs, in no particular order.  I even own one or two albums by some of these artists.

As you read the list, keep in mind I was born in ’81, so the categorization of the songs is relative to that.

Chicago— 25 0r 6 to 4 (oldies radio)

Kansas— Dust in the wind (The Highlander TV series)

Mr. Mister— Broken Wings (pop radio)

Cream— White Room (oldies radio)

Seals and Crofts— Summer Breeze (oldies radio)

Simon & Garfunkel— Scarborough Fair (oldies radio)

U2– With or Without You (pop radio)

Cutting Crew— (I just) Died in your Arms Tonight (pop radio)

Tears for Fears— Head Over Heels (radio/and then later, Donnie Darko)

Genesis— Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (pop radio)

Rolling Stones— Give Me Shelter (radio)

Patsy Cline

Jim Croce— Time in a Bottle (radio-  In college I ended up writing a short story inspired by this song)

Seals & Crofts

Patsy Cline

Anyway, I can’t recall all of them at present, but you get the idea.  What are some songs you remember from your childhood?