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

Gen X 50-year class reunions are sure to be bangers because we'll all be pretty much the same (mentally, at least) as we were in our youth. Raised as latchkey kids with independence bordering on neglect, we felt 30 years old at 15, and that just sort of stuck. So 50 years after high school, count on the gatherings to be lively affairs, especially if they are bolstered by nostalgic songs that we want to hear. 

The Gen X cohort spans the birth years of 1965 to 1980, so our coming-of-age years run from about the late '70s through the end of the '90s, and music was a pretty big deal all through all of them. From vinyl to cassettes to CDs, radio, MTV, and VH-1, music was central to our social lives. However, some Gen Xers were long out of high school by the time grunge music knocked down the doors to mainstream, so our list has to take into account songs from a wide range of years when new genres like synth pop, hip-hop, and pop-punk were coming out of our boomboxes and Walkmans.

Since we can't include them all, to narrow it down, we are going to choose songs that were popular among young Gen Xers, not their parents (sorry, Kenny Rogers). We're also going to keep most of the songs fun and light, knowing we can all sing along, because we want our reunion to have good vibes. That said, when it's time to shut it down, we'll throw in that last slow jam to remind us of our anguished teenage emotions and how glad we are that those are behind us.

The 1980s are considered retro now, but when the '80s were new, the decade embraced all things modern, and one of those things was synth-pop. These artists came in clean-shaven and androgynous — gone were the hairy musicians of the '70s. The so-called New Romantics ushered in a more modern fashion sense along with their new sound, made possible by the availability of things like drum machines, samplers, sequencers, and synthesizers. The elder statespersons of Gen X would have been in high school in late 1982 when Duran Duran released its sophomore album and scored its first U.S. hit with "Hungry Like the Wolf." 

In the early '80s, if we didn't have cable TV yet, we watched MTV at our friends' houses who were lucky enough to have the coolest channel that ever existed. Debuting in August 1981, MTV changed popular music because visuals became part of the product. Now, videos were as integral to making songs popular as was the actual music, and Duran Duran were beneficiaries of that. The group had the perfect storm of a great song, good looks, and a captivating video that helped catapult the song to No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1983.

It's worth mentioning that everyone wasn't getting on board with synth-pop in the early 80s, but even if we were Judas Priest fans laughing at those perpetuating the Satanic Panic era, and even if we were more of a Springsteen, Clash, or Foreigner fan, "Hungry Like The Wolf" was everywhere, and by the time that 50th reunion rolls around, we've likely softened enough for it to bring back some good memories. 

There is nothing more Gen X than the Violent Femmes' self-titled album, released in 1983. Yes, grunge music is strongly associated with our generation. But before grunge, this album stayed relevant to Gen Xers for all of the years since its release, passed along by word of mouth, older siblings, cousins, and friends, so that the entire cohort knows about it. The song "Blister in the Sun" is the Gen X anthem that didn't go mainstream like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" did. Due to the song's longevity, it's made its way to being relatively well-known today. For kids growing up in the '80s and '90s, though, Violent Femmes music was a rite of passage even though "Blister in the Sun" didn't have a video on MTV or get any mainstream radio play. This folk-punk trio was our own weird little thing that the adults were not in the know about. Of course, they didn't know a lot of what we did, but we digress.

The song hits a nostalgic nerve for Gen Xers — we can't help it. It's just plain upbeat and light, evoking a feeling associated with our youth. Who cares what it's about? It's not about anything. How refreshing. Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie told the Village Voice in 2013 after they played it at Coachella, "... as soon as we started out the set with 'Blister in the Sun,' when that riff hit, it was like a swarm of insects coming towards our stage. They all started running from the other stages." Indeed they did, Brian. Indeed, we always will.

We could really play any song from The Beastie Boys' 1986 album "License to Ill," and much of Gen X would still know every word to every song. But "Brass Monkey" in particular is sure to get us at full attention — from its first beat, our youthful instincts are activated. And if this plays at the reunion, we know we must abandon our conversation with whichever name-tagged former classmate we're showing pictures of our kitchen renovations to and pay proper homage to this song. 

You can't not. It's in the rules, and so we give ourselves over to the delightfully obnoxious, high-energy stylings of MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mike D. We may or may not have a castle in Brooklyn where we dwell, but this song speaks to a time when we thought "Spanish fly" was a thing we might encounter one day, like quicksand or flying cars, and it's nice to remember a time when our expectations of the future were more wide-open. It's true that the song is pretty much just about drinking and using alcohol to lure women for liaisons, but times were different, which is why plenty of songs have aged poorly. No one took the Beastie Boys seriously, including themselves, so if you threw this jam on at the reunion, we'd all be silly, care-free kids again — at least for the two minutes and 37 seconds that the song played. 

As we made our way into the '90s, we had no shortage of musicians pushing musical boundaries. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg gave us "Nuthin' But a G'thang" and so much more, while grunge seemed to rise up out of nowhere, or, rather, from the drizzly grey skies of Seattle with a sound and look that matched the mood. Long-haired scruffy dudes were back, and one of those bands toed the line between what was considered the grunge sound and straight-forward rock more than the others: Pearl Jam. We know, Nirvana is the obvious choice for the grunge pick, but Kurt Cobain famously professed his hatred for adoration, and we have plenty for Pearl Jam, the one grunge band that has endured for all of these years, just like us. 

Pearl Jam's "Ten" was arguably one of the best debut albums ever, with "Alive" released on July 7, 1991, as the first single. Gen Xers may remember the first time they heard that opening riff, knowing something new and beautiful was afoot. Those observations were confirmed by the music video. It never hurts to have a swoonworthy frontman, and by the time the '90s rolled around and we were firm in our apathy for the phony Jim and Tammy Fae Bakkers of the world, Pearl Jam delivered authenticity in their music video for "Alive" — something that had been missing in much of '80s mainstream offerings. The power of the song brings back a nostalgia for the gritty early '90s. If you know, you know. 

Time for the trip down memory lane to end, and with that, we give you the tear-jerker of graduations and proms everywhere for the youngest Gen Xers: Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." Speaking of bands that have endured, Green Day is one of post-punk's biggest success stories, releasing five albums in the 1990s and 12 more after that all the way through 2024. We knew them pretty well by the time 1997's "Nimrod" came out and included a song that was a departure from their more typical catchy, high-energy, pop-punk sound. "Good Riddance" was slow and reflective, played acoustically, and even had a small string section, which really got us into our feelings. 

With lyrics like, "Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road / Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go" and "So take the photographs and still frames in your mind / Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time / Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial / For what it's worth, it was worth all the while," the song spoke to change, to growing up, and to the memories made as we looked to the uncertainty of the future. For the purposes of our 50-year reunions, those of us who are lucky enough to make them, the song would certainly take on even more meaning.