5 Classic Rock Songs That Take Boomers Back To Their First Kiss

Compiling a list of five classic rock songs that take boomers back to their first kiss raises interesting points about music and memory. Simply put, music is a powerful time machine that transports us back to our youth, when we experience transformative moments like our first kiss. 

There's science behind all of this. Music triggers parts of the brain connected with emotion and memory, and we can all do mental time travel, which drops us back into scenes from our lives. Scenes from people's teens and 20s are remembered better than later events; it's what psychologists call "the reminiscence bump." Finally, first kiss memories are adjacent to, if not overlapping, first love memories. Those memories are persistent because they trigger intense feelings.

Classic rock songs were the soundtracks to boomers' first kisses, and they can take people back to a time when all seemed possible and the excitement and uncertainty of adulthood lay ahead, if only for a few minutes. These songs, which include the straight-ahead reportage of the Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me," the uncomplicated celebration of Wings' "Silly Love Songs," and the painterly impressionism of Fleetwood Mac's "Sentimental Lady," remind us all — not just boomers — of music's life-altering power.

The Crystals' 1963 hit "Then He Kissed Me" may be the most on-the-nose example of a song guaranteed to bring boomers back to their first kiss. Amid chiming guitars and galloping percussion, Dolores "La La" Brooks' confident and exuberant lead vocals could be a young woman's diary entry: "When he danced, he held me tight / And when he walked me home that night / All the stars were shining bright, and then he kissed me." Boomer women, then still girls, arguably identified with the tune's straightforward narrative, one that ends happily, albeit in an old-fashioned sense, with a marriage proposal.

The song's directness may seem cheesy, but it's bold, evocative, tuneful, and emotionally engaging — a superlative example of the 1960s girl group sound, a genre that combines pop, R&B, rock 'n' roll, and gutsy vocals by Black women singers. "Then He Kissed Me" benefits from co-writer Phil Spector's lavish production. Spector, who died on January 16, 2021, while incarcerated for murder, drenches "Then He Kissed Me" in his dense, echoey, and orchestral "wall of sound," which in this tune's case, includes harps, strings, and brass.

Like a vivid memory of that first, seemingly magical kiss, the song has proven timeless, recorded in 1981 by Rachel Sweet for her similarly titled album "... And Then He Kissed Me" and appearing on the soundtrack of the 1990 gangster film "Goodfellas." It's the Crystals' version, however, that continues to delight boomers, transporting them back to the excitement and joy of that transformative moment.

"Cherish is a word I use to describe / All the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside." Is there anything more romantic than a heartfelt confession of deep — and unrequited — feelings? Checking out the "Baby Boomers by Jukebox Nostalgia" post on Facebook, we came across one woman listing the Association's chart-topping 1966 hit "Cherish" as a romantic memory trigger. "He gave me that record to show me how he felt," she writes.

For boomer kids, this was the smooth contemporary pop their parents would play on the hi-fi stereo. Under the right circumstances, like an adult party, kids might catch a glimpse of mom and dad slow-dancing and smooching while the Association co-founder Terry Kirkman sings, "You don't know how many times I've wished that I could mold you / Into someone who could cherish me as much as I cherish you."

Kids learn by example, and when they experience their first kiss, they may not yet be deep into their teenage years, when everything their parents like is, by definition, uncool. Amid boppy beats, swarming harmonies, and perky, "bum-bum" backing vocals, the song gives off an undeniable emotional charge as it canters into its crooning chorus. What's a more wholesome soundtrack for a boomer's first, likely chaste, kiss? Unfortunately, the song's bridge reveals its stalkerish vibe, with Kirkman obsessing over the attention other guys lavish on his not-yet-to-be beloved, before belting out that she's driving him out of his mind.

Over delicate coils of guitar, Bob Welch's yearning croon seems pitched between a sigh and a breeze: "You are here and warm / But I could look away and you'd be gone." Few songs cut to the heightened emotion at the heart of a first kiss, where every moment is etched into memory and imbued with significance, as well as "Sentimental Lady."

When two boomer kids shared their first kiss, they were already surrounded by sad songs lamenting love's fleeting nature. A potential breakup may already have been on their minds, fraught with the dramatic, romantic grandeur favored by youth. "Sentimental Lady," one of two tunes that Welch composed for Fleetwood Mac's 1972 album "Bare Trees," captures that sweet sadness with madrigal-like delicacy and intricacy, particularly at the song's fade-out where Welch's velvety vocals entwine with Christine McVie's airy alto. This, the song's original version, possesses a tender yet displaced quality, like a half-remembered dream dissolving in the morning light.

Released as a single, "Sentimental Lady" didn't chart, but Welch went solo in 1974 and recut the song in 1977. This shortened version, featuring backing vocals and production by McVie and Lindsey Buckingham, who joined Fleetwood Mac after Welch's departure, shot to No. 8 on Billboard's Hot 100. By that time, the young lovers who had fallen under the 1972 version's misty, oneiric spell, were five years older, and probably too worldly — in the teenaged know-it-all sense — to be touched by Welch's "sentimental gentle wind."

Plangent electric piano emerges from a cloudbank of sighing, sustained voices as Eric Stewart croons, "I like to see you, but then again / That doesn't mean you mean that much to me." 10cc's No. 2 Billboard hit "I'm Not in Love" may seem like an anti-love song, but it's an achingly romantic boomers' first kiss anthem.

Stewart co-wrote the song after trying to find a way to tell his wife he loved her without coming off insincere. "I chose to say 'I'm not in love with you,' while subtly giving all the reasons ... why I could never let go of this relationship," Stewart told Sound on Sound. The song notes, and then undermines, popular culture's message that boomer men and boys should refuse to acknowledge their emotions. There's a scene in the film and boomer TV staple "It's a Wonderful Life" where Jimmy Stewart proclaims he doesn't want marriage before passionately kissing Donna Reed. 10cc's song is the musical analog of that scene, sustaining tension like an impending embrace, but unlike the movie, the tune teasingly withholds the kiss.

At the song's midpoint, a beaded curtain of silvery percussion parts, and a woman's voice whispers: "Be quiet, big boys don't cry." It's clear that the protagonist of "I'm Not in Love" doth protest too much. He's head over heels in love, and if he doesn't grasp the fleeting joy of that first kiss, he'll dissolve in a pool of tears.

In the middle of Paul McCartney's celebratory "Silly Love Songs" comes a moment of reflection: "Love doesn't come in a minute / Sometimes it doesn't come at all." That glimpse of vulnerability instills the song with unexpected gravitas before it bounds on in an ebullient vein. That moment's conflicting emotions are particularly pointed for first-time kissers. As noted above, canoodling boomer kids can imbue a quick lip-lock with great meaning — they're on the cusp of adulthood. A first kiss engenders a frisson of risk, but it's also exciting and fun. A whole new world of relationships is opening up.

That's why seasoned songsmith McCartney doesn't toss off the song's sentiments like a music-hall ditty, vis-à-vis his "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." He's forcefully crooning his heart out. McCartney's fully aware of his silly song's subtext, saying to embrace love when it comes, because it's much rarer than we might think.

With its jubilant bassline and surging, uplifting horns, "Silly Love Songs," a hit single off the 1976 album "Wings at the Speed of Sound," commanded the top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 for five weeks. "People have been doing love songs forever ... and there's a lot of people I love," McCartney told Billboard. "I'm lucky enough to have that in my life." Catchy and deceptively slight, "Silly Love Songs" evokes the energizing mix of emotions boomers felt when their lips first touched — and when those feelings deepened over the years. What's wrong with that?