5 Golden Oldies That Take Boomers Back To Their First Date

A first date and the often-accompanying first kiss are milestone events in a young person's life. And during the Boomers' teenage years, music producers were all too happy to soundtrack this emergence into adulthood with a plethora of songs about love. Romance was in the air and on the airwaves, and iconic '60s bands like the Beach Boys, the Supremes, and the Ronettes provided the background for many of that generation's teenagers to take the plunge and try to hold someone's hand, then spend the next 10 minutes wondering if their hand was too sweaty.

We've chosen the mid-to late 1960s for our time window, assuming "peak Boomer" births in the late 1940s and early 1950s and a rough first date age of 13 to 15 years old. Also, these songs were hits, enjoying airplay long after their initial release, so even late arrivals or those with strict parents might have gotten a Supremes-soundtracked first kiss. (We hope, for their sake, that many of them did.)

Lesley Gore's greatest claim to fame is "You Don't Own Me," one of a handful of '60s pop songs that presented their singers as independent actors, not just participants in the pairing off and breaking up that produced much of the storylines of the era's songs. That doesn't mean that Gore was above cranking out high-quality bubblegum like "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" and the two-song saga "It's My Party" and "Judy's Turn to Cry." They've all got their merits, but the vengeful, triumphant "Judy's Turn to Cry" stands out as one of the most tonally unusual in the '60s catalog.

"It's My Party" sets up the breakup between the singer and her boyfriend Johnny (at the singer's own party, no less!) But by "Judy's Turn to Cry," she's turned the tables on Judy, manipulating matters so that the faithless Johnny slugs another guy in a fit of jealousy, leading him and the singer to reconcile. (Judy, girl, find less messy people to hang out with.) It's easy to imagine a couple cuddling up to this radio hit, promising they'll never, no never, break up like that. 

In a last bit of mild irony, Gore didn't get the guy after all — she didn't want him. At the time of her 2015 death, she'd been with her female partner for 33 years.

There are quite a few Beach Boys songs that could qualify for this list, but "God Only Knows" gets the nod for two reasons. The first is simply that it's a wonderfully done song. Even those of us who prefer our men a little more rough around the edges and tend to leave the sweet-voiced tenors to our competitors can appreciate Carl Wilson's sad-boy vocals here. Light and high without being reedy, as sad as a clarinet left out in the rain, Wilson hits every word clearly, sacrificing neither musicianship nor the poetry of the lyrics.

"God Only Knows" is, lyrically, a very young-love song: "If you should ever leave me / Well, life would still go on, believe me / The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me?" Life isn't over after your first breakup, but it doesn't feel that way. After the age of 25 or 30, most people have realized that, yeah, they're going to keep on living through quite a few heartbreaks. Those first few, though, those teenage and early-20s pre-frontal-lobe-completion gutshot breakups, hurt, and even imagining them can leave you singing quietly, softly, sweetly, along with Wilson and the Boys.

The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" is one of the sweetest songs ever to hit the American airwaves. No playing hard to get, no games, just a big pile of love: "So won't you say you love me? / I'll make you so proud of me / We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go." Ronnie Bennett, still a few years from the mistake of becoming Ronnie Spector, offering three-for-one kisses and eternal devotion? The only reason to turn her down would be if you already had a girl, and this song is perfect for crooning along to the sweetie already in your arms.

A seldom-celebrated but important aspect of "Be My Baby" and its longevity is that you can sing it to nearly anyone or anything you love, adjusting the lyrics or not as you prefer. A sweetheart is the original meaning, but there's no reason not to sing it to your child. Or your pet. Or a sourdough starter in need of encouragement. An ailing geranium. Anything that needs a little bit of Ronettes' magic to thrive.

Oh, how the world changes: When "I Got You, Babe" came out, some people thought of Cher as Sonny Bono's wife. Now Cher is one of the world's immortal entertainers, and Sonny ... proved to be mortal, living on in memory thanks to having been Cher's first husband. Who stole from her. Still, the Sonny and Cher joint act was fun while it lasted, and it gave us the duet that launched a thousand Halloween costumes (and 900 fights over who got to be Cher), "I Got You, Babe."

It's corny, but it's fun, a judgment you could extend over most of the pair's joint output. It's perfect for singing along to in the car on the way to a date (or just tooling around, stealing a few more minutes in each other's company. And if one of you biffs the counting and comes in early or late on "Babe," well ... they did too, sometimes.

Back before Diana Ross had fully emerged into her final diva form, when she was "just" one of the members of ultra-glamorous girl group the Supremes, she was the lead singer on their hit "Baby Love." Recorded while their first indisputable hit, "Where Did Our Love Go," was rocking the charts and released before the earlier song had left the Top 40, "Baby Love" hit the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts in the autumn of 1964, cementing the Supremes as, at the very least, a two-hit wonder.

The other Supremes got tired of people saying things like "this song really plays to Diana Ross's strengths," but that didn't make it untrue. Never a powerful singer but always a graceful one, Ross has an excellent ability to make a track sound intimate, like she's singing for an audience of one. This light touch, combined with the sexy-but-restrained ad-libbed "oohs" she interposes, means this song inspired an awful lot of reaching over to take someone's hand for the first time.