5 Nostalgic Songs Every Boomer Will Want To Hear At Their 50-Year High School Reunion

Picture yourself as a boomer, one of the many people born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1964, at your 50-year high school reunion. As you look around the banquet hall at your former classmates, what tunes do you want to hear over the loudspeakers? The Who's rowdy rocking "My Generation," which evokes the generation gap that sparked the tumultuous, rebellious 1960s, but also summons the perennial excitement and uncertainty of youth? Or perhaps Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon," recalling the 1970s pop-occult explosion while evoking enduring romance and mystery?

It's inevitable that a reunion after so many years will prompt thoughts about the passage of the years, but the music of any generation's youth is so much more than a time machine. The memories stirred by these tunes persist, and the emotions they evoke are timeless. When compiling a playlist for our 50-year Boomer High reunion, we sought songs that will stir memories from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, which span the teen years of the boomer generation. For those young adults in the making, it was a formative time when music was never more important, helping people to forge friendships, define identities, or just blow off steam. And yet, while it may seem counterintuitive, such songs that speak most clearly to certain eras can also seem the most present. 

Plucked upright bass, waltz-time piano, and celestial harmonies set the stage for Elvis Presley's assured, vibrato-laden vocals on "Can't Help Falling in Love". Released as a single from Presley's 1961 movie soundtrack "Blue Hawaii," the sentimental love song shot to Billboard Hot 100's No. 2 spot, as well as the top of the Adult Contemporary chart. With understated instrumentation making space for Presley's vulnerable and yearning vocals, this is a showcase for movie-star Elvis, not the 1950s swaggering, hip-shaking rocker — but who cares?

Presley had his dark side, ranging from strange obsessions to unhealthy relationships, but in "Can't Help Falling in Love" he's drenched in authenticity and charisma. It's also the last tune he performed live, at his last concert at Indianapolis' Market Square Arena, less than two months before he died.

Presley arguably ensconced himself into older boomers' hearts with this tender, heartfelt ballad, which elicits thoughts of first, lost, and enduring loves. It's easy to imagine younger boomers, listening to their elder sibling's records, also falling under Presley's spell. We submit there's no better slow-dance song than "Can't Help Falling in Love." We envision boomers rising from their seats in the reunion dance hall, achy backs and knees forgotten, and close dancing to Presley's heartfelt croon. As Presley sings with empathy and conviction, "Some things are meant to be."

There are many sentimental '60s songs that instantly take boomers back to childhood, but there's one tune that solidly taps into that generation's tempestuous teenage years. The title of The Who's defiant 1965 youth anthem "My Generation" is definitely on the nose, and the tune couldn't be more boomer. Songwriter Pete Townsend told Radio X that the song was inspired by his generation's disconnect with the World War II generation that preceded it. "Those people had sacrificed so much for us, but they weren't able to give us anything. No guidance, no inspiration," Townsend says. "We were expected to shut up and enjoy the peace ... And we decided not to do that."

Musically, the title track of The Who's 1965 debut album is as energized as its apolitical yet rebellious message, conveyed in the accusatory lyrics spat out and stuttered by Roger Daltrey. With rampaging guitars, a jittery melody, and a coruscating feedback coda, the track presages punk. The song's sole display of instrumental virtuosity is John Entwistle's nimble, twangy bass solo.

"My Generation" is an uplifting, shambolic singalong. Unlike classic '60s protest songs and calls for mind expansion, it's a timeless evocation of restless, impatient youth. For boomers, it arguably elicits the frustration and anxiety that their younger selves felt when confronting the constraints of encroaching adulthood. Older and wiser now, boomers may feel a frisson of recognition in the rampaging tune, and wish to hold on to its message: "This is my generation, baby."

With percussive piano and a stomping glam-rock beat, Electric Light Orchestra's infectious 1977 "Mr. Blue Sky" hits all the boomer buttons right off the bat. It's a catchy, upbeat singalong that you never want to end. At over five minutes, this fast-paced, concerto-slash-confection jauntily bops along before charging toward a faux-operatic crescendo with heavenly choir. As the last chord fades, a vocoder-treated voice says, "Please turn me over."

There's so much for a boomer audience to love, including that vocal coda. "Mr. Blue Sky" originally ended side three of ELO's double album "Out of the Blue." If you wanted to hear more music, you had to flip the vinyl disc over — a detail that Boomers assuredly would know, having grown up in a pre-streaming world.

ELO had an extraordinary run of hits in the '70s, with 17 songs breaking Billboard's Hot 100, and several charting higher than "Mr. Blue Sky's" No. 37. "Mr. Blue Sky" clings to the collective consciousness because it's ELO's most Beatles-esque tune, perhaps. In 2017, "Mr. Blue Sky" saw a resurgence in popularity when it landed on the soundtrack for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." No doubt it triggered the self-satisfied boomer boast: "Music was so much better in my day."

In Fleetwood Mac's spellbinding "Rhiannon," Lindsey Buckingham's irresistible guitar riff and Christine McVie's bell-like keyboards propel Nicks' sensuous vocals as she relates the tale of a shapeshifting and unobtainable enchantress. The song proved as irresistible as its subject – a mythological Celtic goddess – hitting No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976.

The '70s saw an explosion of interest in witchcraft, Wicca, and New Age spiritualism, and Fleetwood Mac tapped into that occult zeitgeist. Although Nicks denied being a witch, her gossamer, proto-goth stage attire, songs like "Rhiannon," and her hair-raising vocals seemed to say otherwise. 

With a "Welsh witch" who can instantly take to the skies and a protagonist professing yearning, unrequited love, "Rhiannon" evokes boomer nostalgia for angst-ridden teenage romance, but it also awakens the witchy ephemera of the generation's youth — popular occult paperbacks, TV shows, and made-for-TV movies. "Rhiannon" lets boomers have it both ways. An impeccably crafted pop gem that evokes memories of romance, it also sparks the evocative frisson of witchy, forbidden fruit.

In 1983, the single "Let's Dance" reached No. 1 in the U.K. and U.S., and is one of Bowie's biggest Billboard hit singles, although the title track's album fell out of critical favor. "I went mainstream in a major way with the song 'Let's Dance,'" Bowie lamented to "Interview." "I had ... put a box around myself. It ... took all my passion for experimenting away." With brittle, metallic drums, an ascending four-note opening that echoes the Isley Brothers' vertiginous vocal breakout on "Twist and Shout," David Bowie's "Let's Dance" gets off to a familiar yet alien start. 

On one hand, the multipart tune, characterized by punchy horns, dueling saxophones, and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Albert King-derived guitar, seems to channel 1940s jump blues. On the other hand, Bowie's lyrics flirt with despair. "There's a particular type of desperation and poignancy about ["Let's Dance"]," Bowie said in Nicholas Pegg's "The Complete David Bowie." Praised and then scorned, "Let's Dance" is a Bowie tune that sounds even cooler today and should fill any boomer reunion dance floor.