Nostalgia isn’t beholden to parameters like logic, mood, or chronology, which is why we can still experience those wistful, heartstring-tugging emotions toward music that has nothing to do with our personal lives (and maybe even came out decades before we were born).
Indeed, some music transcends time as the human construct we know it to be. No matter how old you are, these four tracks have a timelessly moving quality that can leave you yearning for a reality that you never actually lived through.
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“Time Of The Season” by The Zombies
The Zombies’ 1968 track, “Time Of The Season”, is one of those rare songs that seems to fit any season of any year. It’s like a musical chameleon. Whether you’re listening to it on a sultry summer day or looking out at a crisp, moody autumn afternoon, it really feels like The Kinks are singing about that time of that season.
Interestingly, The Zombies scored this sleeper hit after they had already broken up. Perhaps there’s a natural sense of nostalgia, an urge to return to what once was, because of that.
“Spirit In The Sky” by Norman Greenbaum
Even those who don’t follow the Christian faith can likely find some semblance of a nostalgic reaction to Norman Greenbaum’s one-hit wonder from 1969, “Spirit In The Sky”. And when one takes a closer look at the lyrics, it’s easy to see why people would feel nostalgia toward them. The very dictionary definition references feelings toward places that a person has never been.
And if Greenbaum is busy singing about going to “the place that’s the best,” why wouldn’t you feel nostalgic about that kind of place? Who wouldn’t want to see what that place is like?
“Hey Jude” by The Beatles
If Paul McCartney has proven anything at all over his decades-long career, it’s that he can whip a listener into an emotional frenzy with his songwriting alone. One of the finest examples is “Hey Jude” from The Beatles’ eponymous 1968 White Album. Regardless of whether the listener knows who Jude is or the woman he’s bound to go out and get, people can imbue their own sentimentalities into the track.
If a listener doesn’t find something to relate to by the end of the song, the rousing chorus of “na, na, na, na”s takes it the rest of the way home.
“Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell
Closing out this list of nostalgic songs from the late 1960s is Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman”, a Jimmy Webb composition that leaves listeners feeling like they just clocked out of a long shift climbing telephone poles in rural Kansas, even if they’ve never even been inside the state’s borders. From the swirling violin intro to Campbell’s tender vocal delivery, the song is practically begging you to yearn over it.
And with lines like, “And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time,” how could you not?
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