4 Feel-Good Songs From 1969 That Every Baby Boomer Can Still Sing by Heart

The best kind of music makes us feel good, and when we first hear those songs in our youth, a time in our lives when feeling good is often top priority, they tend to stick with us even longer. Even decades later, we’ll find ourselves surprisingly able to sing the songs back by heart. For baby boomers coming of age in the late 1960s and beyond, that includes these four feel-good songs from 1969.

“Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension

Virtually every baby boomer can likely sing The 5th Dimension’s 1969 hit single “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by heart, even if you were never really sure about what or who Aquarius was and why we were living in the age of it. You didn’t even have to be a musical theatre nerd, though it helped, since both songs came from the 1967 musical Hair. The psychedelic soul song captures the hopeful experimentation of the late 1960s, when the world seemed especially technicolor and full of possibility.

“Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ode to working on a riverboat remains one of their best-known songs to this day, over five decades after CCR first released the track on their second album, Bayou Country. “Proud Mary” has the kind of working-class sensibility that a vast majority of listeners can relate to, even if they lived nowhere near a major marine transportation hub. Thanks to Tina and Ike Turner’s equally popular rendition from 1971, baby boomers got yet another version to memorize front to back.

“Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond

You don’t have to be a sports-loving baby boomer to know all of the words to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. The song was just that massive in 1969. In fact, this single became so popular that Diamond added “Sweet Caroline” to re-pressings of his fourth studio album, Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show. These days, the song is almost a cliché, especially in the baseball world. The Boston Red Sox have co-opted this track as their de facto anthem since the late 1990s.

“Crimson And Clover” by Tommy James And The Shondells

Tommy James And The Shondells’ shimmery, wistful hit “Crimson And Clover” closes out this list of feel-good songs from 1969. The straightforward chord progression and dreamy guitar tone conjure memories of being in love for the first time: sweet, hopeful, maybe even a little shallow in a naive kind of way. Most baby boomers can likely still sing this song by heart, even if they’re imagining Joan Jett’s subsequent version from 1981 while they do it.

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