Tuning in to Fond Memories

I do not have a favorite song. I have 10,000 favorite songs. And each one of these musical masterpieces — mostly from the past — fill me with memories of times, places and people I cherish. It’s why audiences sing together at concerts or smile when singing in church or even at parades. It’s why I sing alone in the shower.

Summer is the time of outdoor festing, feasting and listening to musicians and performers of all stripes of musical genres — from classical to country, jazz to pop. At venues across the city, suburbs and country, you can hear emerging artists as well as the original bands belting out or sweetly vocalizing the songs that have sprinkled through your life.

The feeling even has a name— musical nostalgia.

I was at an outdoor concert with two close friends recently and we swayed and sang to songs from the 70s and 80s, songs that punctuated the episodes of high school, college and early adulthood. The choruses and refrains aligned with a certain romance, unforgettable victory, deeply earned laughter, and sometimes heartache.

Each memorized lyric held for each of us — and the thousands in the audience — a valued recollection. For a moment, I was 16 or 20 or 30. The memory moments felt as crisp and renewed as the acoustical guitar and bass serving as messengers of the past.

I know all the words. Because the words helped define me.

Growing up, I remember my mother singing at times when she did the laundry or made dinner — songs from her youth, songs from the 40s and 50s that I learned to revere. My father would sing walking in the back door from work, or he would whistle from his workbench in the basement, tinkering with this and that, before heading to the backyard to mow the lawn.

I have learned that this longing for familiar music is validated by neuroscience. Brain imaging shows that old, favorite songs stimulate certain parts of your brain called the pleasure circuit. No wonder we smile when we hear our beloved repertoire of hits.

My five brothers and sisters and I danced in the basement in the house on Jackson Avenue to the 45s blaring from the huge console record player — the length of a dining room table, parked near the ping pong table and against the wall facing the pool table. That rec room was a favorite destination for our friends and neighbors. Pretty sure my parents designed that on purpose so they knew where we were.

Petula Clark, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Motown, James Taylor, Carole King — we played their albums bought with a carefully secured weekly allowance and read the lyrics on the back of the album cover.

I had a small record player in the room I shared with my sister Madeleine. Our tastes differed a bit — I played Led Zeppelin while she was more in the Cat Stevens or Neil Young camp.

There were a few transistor radios in the house — not one of us could claim one as our own and “hog” it. But if I was lucky and had first dibs, I could listen to the top 40 tunes alone in my room and dutifully learn the lyrics Elton John put into the universe, along with Diana Ross, Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye.

Songs from the 80s and 90s like Michael Jackson, Queen and Whitney Houston were topping the charts at the same time I was starting to raise a family. They provided much need distraction and comfort at the time. I guess I played those artists’ hits a lot then in our house, because now my three grown sons know all the words to the songs from that era.

When my sons were small, after dinner and dishes were done, we would sometimes dance in the family room to cassette tapes of my favorites — Bonnie Raitt and Abba to name just a few. It was a way to laugh and be together without an agenda or task. No homework. No sports schedules. Just move and sing. This routine ended long before they hit middle school because who dances with their mom?

The rhythms and melodies I hold in my head and heart have the power to immerse me in a time that has passed and makes me feel physically and emotionally as I did years ago — if only for four minutes or less. I am not wishing I was back there, nor do I want to be that age again. I just revel in the time travel.

Yes, my playlist is long and embraces the phases of my life then and now. I sing along to remember. I do not want to forget.