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I am obsessed with the songs I remember the best. The songs whose lyrics immediately come to mind upon the ring of the first chord. The songs I first heard many years ago, and continue to listen to through my 22nd year. I\u2019ve listened to these songs hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My old reliables bolster my every playlist, and I never skip them; I often skip other songs just to reach them.<\/p>\n
I know this experience is not unique to me; everyone loves their childhood songs. We are addicted to nostalgia. We obsess over the familiar comforts. A song can evoke autobiographical, personal memories<\/a> and vivid sensory experiences of the moment you heard it. It can bring back the comfort of childhood or the indescribable feeling of hearing a track that feels as though it was made for you and whatever challenge you faced.<\/p>\n Though I know I first fell in love with my favorite, most unskippable songs in my earliest childhood, what makes these songs so special to me is their lack of a tie to a single memory. They bring me back sometimes, but more often than not to a powerful feeling rather than a single moment. Because I listen to them so obsessively, they don\u2019t even feel like childhood songs anymore. They are tied to all of the moments I\u2019ve had set to their glorious backtrack, far beyond my first memories as a kid in a car seat listening to my parents\u2019 radio.\u00a0<\/p>\n