So I’ve been pondering this for a while now. I mean, it came up again in the past couple of days and it made me think enough to text the all knowing J B Lo about it.
You’ve all got a couple of songs that, when you hear them, make you go "Ahh, that takes me back…". You know, a song played at your school’s prom, 18th birthday or even simply a song from an TV advert from yesteryear. It interested me. I was sitting there wondering why, when we hear certain songs or sounds, it instantly makes us very… reminiscent.
I asked John (because, you know, he’s the all knowing psychological being these days) and, while he tried his best bless him, A2 Psychology just doesn’t really cover it. something to do with auditory recall or… something. But no, never fear, for I have the really boring explanation as to why it happens.
It’s a fairly recent discovery, but the medial pre-frontal cortex (or the bit behind the forehead, to us normal people) calls the memories it associates with the certain rhythm, beats and pitches it’s hearing and shows you them in a sort of mental slideshow. It’s an involuntary sort of reaction, which is why when you hear, for example, Toploader’s Dancing In The Moonlight, you see Jamie Oliver as a sort of reflex.
It’s those good times in your life you associate them more with. That’s why you never hear a song that particularly reminds you of a sad time and makes you cry, but more of a good time gone by. In a study of people graduating from the same high school, they found that lots of them associated Vanilla Ice’s song "Ice Ice Baby" with happier times, because it was a big song at their leaver’s ball. It’s those sorts of big events which are more likely to trigger these sorts of recollections, but Jamie does cook a mean sausage…
Do your parent’s listen to those old music stations, too? Well, there you go. It’s not because "Music was better in my day", it’s because they can associate more things with that music and enjoy it more. Maybe they’re recalling the first date with their now partner thanks to it being the song on the radio as they first kissed? Eww… mushy stuff, but yeah, that’d be why.
So what songs do I associate good times with? Well, okay, it’s not exactly ‘good times’ as such, but it’s a flagship of good times passing. Dido – White Flag is actually the song that led me to ask John the question in the first place. It’s really just a song of love leaving me. Ahh, well, I’ll get over it.
Daniel Beddingfield – If You’re Not the One is another one which I associate with the fun times had with a past girlfriend (hey, not in that way… I was 12, dude). Specifically the time where we were at a friend’s parent’s wedding reception, lying outside on the bank and laughing at how she said ‘midges’. Good times. 
Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger is another good times with a (different, obviously) girlfriend. The reasoning is fairly obvious, I’d hope from listening to it, but I associate it with the memory of sliding outside her house on the ice with her best friend and her, then staying over her house, with her friend snoring all night. We threw teddies at her. I also associate it with the smell of her perfume-soaked red rose she gave me that day. Ahh. Happy days.
In more recent times, I’ll associate Nickelback – Rockstar with the Sicily Res-Ed trip in the Lower Sixth of NSB. At this time, I’d just got my iPod, and frantically downloading songs onto it so I can take it and love it in Sicily. Listening to this song while playing Padingo with Mr Wilcock. Now if that isn’t a lasting image, I don’t know what is.
But yeah, there’s plenty of songs I really don’t like listening because they bring back too many memories and I don’t want to get all bleary-eyed in front of people. :p Songs like Bright Eyes – Four Winds, Bryan Adams – I Do It For You and, to an extent, Avril Lavigne – Sk8er Boi. Heh.
But yeah. Music is a very powerful medium. Musicians, don’t abuse it. Otherwise I might end up getting overly emotional about stuff, and nobody wants that.
ahh back in the days when Jamie Oliver was cool.