5 Songs That Earned Boomers Bragging Rights Over Their Generation's Music

Baby boomers know that folks are jealous, especially of their music. Don't believe us? Okay. Non-boomers, do a quick rundown of the greatest musical artists of your formative years and hold them up against the following list: Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Queen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, and ... You get the point? Yes, boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) won the musical lotto. But even out of all such musical greatness, certain tracks give boomers bragging rights more than others.

As the reader can see from the shortlist above, we're tackling an incomparable catalogue of music with this article. How do we choose only five songs? It stands to reason that we need to choose songs that were not only good at the time, but are good for all time. Each song also needs to have some transcendent, generation-defining quality that acted as a tentpole for boomers in their childhood years, teens, and 20s. This could be related to composition, production, subject matter, or any of the three. At the same time, our selections need to be locked to their era, i.e., they couldn't/wouldn't really be made outside of the time they were made. And since we're dealing with songs, we need to leave off instrumental-only tracks from the likes of Miles Davis. 

While many, many songs have to be omitted from our list, we're keeping the lovely and timeless "Yesterday" from The Beatles and metal's most OG of heavy songs, "War Pigs," from Black Sabbath. We've also got cuts from Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, plus a final selection from Pink Floyd that tells the theme of this article in its song name. 

Really, could a Beatles song not be on this list? We're not going to go halfway and say that the Beatles are "one of" the most influential bands of all time. They are the most influential band, period. Whether it's employing never-before-used sound production techniques, pioneering the music video, defining the term "rock star" in a global, commercial sense, or just the obvious — penning some of the most memorable, exquisitely architected songs of the 20th century — the Beatles permanently overhauled our musical soundscape. For the purposes of this article, practically any Beatles song could suffice. But, we're going to go with "Yesterday" off 1965's "Help."

Not released too early in the Beatles more elementary days, nor in later, whackier work, "Yesterday" contains some of "Blackbird's" folk plucking, "Eleanor Rigby's" string section, and is basically a Paul McCartney solo outing. That's fine, because we all know what the Fab Four were capable of. Simply speaking, "Yesterday" is a perfect song. Poignant but not mawkish, long enough to make its point but not overstaying its welcome, "Yesterday" is structured around such a tight melody and beautifully layered instrumental lines that, as Antonio Salieri said in the 1984 film, "Amadeus," "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall."

Just to drive home the point, even the other Beatles said that "Yesterday" didn't need any other instruments beyond McCartney's voice and guitar. In fact, the song's melody and chord progression felt so familiar that McCartney, who just woke up with them in his head one day, thought it was some old folk tune or something that he didn't remember. Could there be more legendary lore underpinning such a magnificent song from such a mythic band?

If we can't talk about the origins of soul, R&B, or their modern offshoots like hip-hop or rap, without talking about Stevie Wonder, then we certainly can't leave Wonder off our list. The word "genius" gets tossed around a lot when it comes to musicians, but he actually lived up to the title. Signed to Motown Records at a mere 11 years old, Wonder at 22 years old had already begun what's called his "classic period" from 1972 to 1976. His series of masterful albums — "Talking Book," "Music of My Mind," "Innervisions," "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and "Songs in the Key of Life" — all came from this time. We've got to call out "Superstition" from 1972's "Talking Book" not only for its clever, catchy-as-hell composition, but for its technical innovation. 

There isn't a person alive who wouldn't recognize the opening piano line to "Superstition" — and yes, that's a piano. It's a clavinet, actually, a type of electric piano modeled after the clavichord that sounds more like slap bass than anything. The clavinet is funky, groovy, and an immaculate fit for "Superstition's" rhythmic stresses, which pepper the song's panorama in unusual places that boost its bounce and texture. This was also the first time that the clavinet played center stage in a prominent pop song. And yes, Wonder's vocal delivery and key "Very superstitious" line is unforgettable and hummable even only after one listen.

Like the Beatles' "Yesterday," "Superstition" comes equipped with a notable backstory. Wonder actually wrote the song for guitarist Jeff Beck in exchange for Beck playing on "Talking Book's" "Lookin' for Another Pure Love." But, record executive Berry Gordy knew it would be a hit and wanted Wonder to keep it. Good call, Gordy.

No matter that Steppenwolf first used the term "heavy metal" in a musical context in 1968's "Born to Be Wild," it was Black Sabbath who laid the foundation for the entirety of heavy music to come. It's completely true to say that without Sabbath, we lose the whole musical lineage that splintered all the way to modern metal's numerous subgenres, particularly doom metal and bands like Electric Wizard, which are basically Sabbath 2.0. We especially lose that lineage without guitarist Tony Iommi's unintentional blood pact via severed fingertips that led to his peculiar playing style. Now that's metal.

But it wasn't only Iommi on display in the track that cemented Sabbath's legacy and influence, "War Pigs," the first track off of Sabbath's second album, 1970's "Paranoid." Drummer Bill Ward's jazz chops, ferociously in-the-pocket rhythm, and killer drum fills fused with bassist Geezer Butler's syncopated plucks and the impassioned vocals of the Prince of Darkness, the late and great Ozzy Osbourne, himself. The result is a sickly groovy, headbang-worthy, riff-stuffed, jam session-sounding, speaking-truth-to-power track that was so cutting edge when it came out that it still outstrips the efforts of countless bands today. 

Of course, Sabbath's unique eclecticism and musical stylings didn't form in a vacuum. The late '60s U.K. was a hotbed for underground, proto-metal acts like High Tide and Gun that coincided with Sabbath's rise. But this, too, is a feather in the cap of any boomer, because those bands also belong to the generation that granted us Sabbath and all of the modern black band T-shirts you could ask for. Horns up.

Marvin Gaye's 1971 album, "What's Going On," is a flawless, absolutely moving, lushly instrumental, magically composed soul masterpiece. From beginning to end, Gaye doesn't just match his previous efforts, but exceeds them, and not just because of socially-minded song topics. Every song on "What's Going On" overflows with as much syncopated, rhythmic perfection as it does refined melodic/harmonic combinations, and is just as avant-garde as it is grounded. So why choose "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" as a song that grants boomers ultimate musical bragging rights? Go listen to it. If you can stay still, then you might have never had a soul at all.

Be sure to listen to "Mercy Mercy Me" with headphones, though, because the song's flowing, aural backdrop lights up the ears as much as it does the spirit. The shimmering, staccato guitar chords dance tastefully against the song's main piano progression and bassline, while Gaye sings both melody and harmony. Heck, there's even a sax solo. You can listen to this song and bop around while cooking as easily as you can close your eyes and sway peacefully.

But "Mercy Mercy Me" is just as lyrically mournful and bittersweet as it is musically uplifting and soothing. Gaye opens with the lines, "Oh, things ain't what they used to be, no, no / Where did all the blue skies go? / Poison is the wind that blows from the North and South and East." Yes, this is an environmentalist song — hence "The Ecology" part of the title. Gaye never comes across as preachy or pretentious, but 100% sincere. That's another notch in the belt of "Mercy Mercy Me's" accomplishments.

To give you an idea of how popular and impactful those most successful of rock progsters Pink Floyd really were, their landmark 1973 album, "The Dark Side of the Moon," sold 50 million copies in and of itself — that's the highest for the entire '70s decade. It stayed in the Billboard Top 200 for 14 years, and even as recently as May 2, 2024, Forbes reported that it sold 10,671 limited-edition vinyl copies released for Record Store Day in the U.S. the previous week. Even so, figures and numbers can't do justice to the depth and significance of Pink Floyd's work, which flows directly from musicianship followed by production. And even though all of their albums are built for whole listens, we're plucking "Time" from "The Dark Side of the Moon" as one of our top-tier, generational picks.

When "Time" starts, it's a floaty, dreamy work decorated with ambient touches like chimes, percussive oddities, sustained background chords, and that cowboy-sounding guitar riff. But past the 2-minute, 30-second mark, it transitions to a straight-up funky, guitar-lick-filled, psychedelic-laced rock song. 

It's this fusion of accessible and inventive that doesn't just define "Time," but Pink Floyd on a whole. This, plus a massive scope condensed into universal, human form in lyrics like, "You fritter and waste the hours / In an offhand way" and "The sun is the same in a relative way / But you're older / Shorter of breath / And one day closer to death." Then there's "Time's" production, which, like all of "The Dark Side of the Moon," is so crisp and clear that it practically sounds like the instruments are within arm's reach. Indeed, "Time" is just as endlessly excellent as the eternity its name implies.