From the first drumbeat of "Stand By Me" in a grocery store to the soaring notes of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at a wedding, these seven tracks physically transport an entire generation back to gymnasium dances, basement parties, and that peculiar mixture of Aqua Net and teenage dreams.
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The crackle of the needle hitting vinyl still lives somewhere in my muscle memory, even though I haven't owned a record player in twenty years.
Yesterday, my granddaughter was driving me to the grocery store when "My Girl" came on her playlist.
Without warning, I was sixteen again, standing in the gymnasium decorated with crepe paper streamers, the smell of Aqua Net and Old Spice mixing in the air, my feet aching in those white patent leather flats I'd begged my mother to buy.
Some songs transport; for those of us who came of age in the '60s, certain melodies are time machines, capable of erasing fifty-plus years in the span of an opening chord.
1) Stand By Me by Ben E. King
When those opening bass notes walk down the scale, I'm instantly back at my first real party without parents hovering nearby.
Someone's older brother had "borrowed" his dad's hi-fi, and we'd set it up in Jennifer's basement while her parents were at their bridge club.
The song came on just as I was trying to look casual standing by the chips and dip, pretending I wasn't watching Danny from across the room.
He walked over during the second verse, and we danced so carefully, maintaining that proper six inches of space between us that the nuns at St. Mary's would have approved of.
Every time I hear Ben E. King's voice now, I can feel the dampness of Danny's palm through my dress, smell the Brylcreem in his hair, and remember thinking that this, surely, was what being grown up felt like.
2) The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel
This song arrived in our lives at the exact moment we needed it.
We were juniors, full of ourselves and our newfound drivers' licenses, when everything shifted.
A boy from our class died in a car accident racing on River Road.
The following Monday, someone brought this record to school and played it during lunch in the courtyard.
We all just stopped and listened.
No one spoke.
Paul Simon's haunting voice seemed to understand something we were just beginning to grasp about loss and the spaces between what we say and what we mean.
Now, decades later, after burying parents and friends and a husband, I understand silence differently.
When this song plays, I'm seventeen again, sitting on those concrete benches, discovering that sometimes the most profound moments of connection happen when no one speaks at all.
3) My Girl by The Temptations
Is there anyone from our generation who doesn't automatically sway when this starts? This was the song that taught us about joy, pure and simple.
At every dance, every party, every gathering where someone had a radio, when "My Girl" came on, we moved.
Even the boys who usually played it cool by the wall would find themselves nodding along.
I remember teaching my little sister the steps we'd all somehow absorbed through osmosis, that smooth Temptations glide.
She'd stand on my feet in our living room while we practiced for her first dance.
Last month, at her granddaughter's wedding, we found ourselves on the dance floor when the DJ played it.
Without missing a beat, we fell into those same moves, muscle memory taking over, and for three minutes we weren't women in our seventies but teenagers in our parents' living room, believing that life would always feel this light.
4) For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield
"There's something happening here..." and there was!
This song became the soundtrack to our political awakening.
We'd gone from sock hops to sit-ins, from worry about grades to worry about draft numbers.
I remember sitting in Michael's car after school, this song on the radio, watching boys we'd known since kindergarten signing up for the military.
Some believed in the cause, others just wanted to choose their branch before the draft chose for them.
The song seemed to understand the confusion we felt, caught between our parents' world and something new trying to be born.
When I hear it now, especially given today's divisions, I realize how naive we were to think our generation would fix everything.
Back then, with Stephen Stills' voice cutting through the AM radio static, we believed we could actually stop and figure out what that sound was.
5) Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell
Joni understood us in a way that felt almost mystical.
Here was a woman's voice, not singing about her boyfriend or dancing or being someone's girl, but about the complexity of perception itself.
We'd lie on someone's bedroom floor, passing around a bottle of Boone's Farm we'd convinced someone's older brother to buy, and let Joni's words wash over us.
"I've looked at clouds from both sides now..." We thought we were so deep, so philosophical.
At eighteen, we believed we'd already seen both sides of everything.
The irony, of course, is that you need about fifty more years of living before you begin to understand what she really meant about illusions.
At the time, having this song made us feel wise beyond our years, like we were already the adults we were so desperate to become.
6) Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by The 5th Dimension
This was playing everywhere the spring of our senior year.
You couldn't escape it, and why would you want to? It felt like the whole world was shifting, and this song was the announcement.
We were going to be different from our parents' generation, we were entering the Age of Aquarius, whatever that meant.
Peace would guide the planets, and love would steer the stars.
How could we not believe it? We sang it at graduation parties, on beach trips, in cars headed to protests or concerts or sometimes just nowhere in particular.
The harmonies of The 5th Dimension made everything feel possible.
When I hear it now, I want to warn that eighteen-year-old girl about all the ways the world will disappoint her, but then I remember how that optimism carried me through so many dark times since, and I'm grateful we had a song that made us believe in dawning ages.
7) Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel
If one song could capture the end of our high school era, it was this.
Released just as we were graduating, it felt like a benediction, a promise we were making to each other before we scattered.
At our last party before everyone left for college or jobs or war, someone played this on repeat.
We were all crying by the third play-through, holding onto each other, promising to write, to visit, to never lose touch.
Art Garfunkel's soaring voice on that last verse still gives me chills.
Some of those friendships did survive, while others faded despite our best intentions.
As this song plays, we're all together again in Tommy's backyard, eighteen and terrified and excited, not knowing that this was the last time all of us would ever be in the same place, but sensing somehow that this was an ending that mattered.
Final thoughts
Music is memory, and these songs are bookmarks in the story of who we were becoming.
When they play now, in grocery stores or on classic radio, they don't just remind us of events.
They resurrect the people we were, with all their hope and uncertainty, their terrible fashion choices and their absolute conviction that they were the first generation to really feel everything this deeply.
Maybe every generation thinks that, and maybe that's the gift music gives us: The ability to be simultaneously who we are now and who we were then, holding both truths in the space of a song.
