A fair bit of the stuff I can recognize as having heard it 'back in the day,'  but for the great majority of it, there's not much of an association with particular events/memories.

My memories that bring back strong emotions - El Paso by Marty Robbins got me dreaming & romanticizing of the West
I Wanna Hold Your hand, I thought was bubble gum music and told my brother that those guys won’t last.
If You Could Read My Mind sends me back deep to a relationship breakup,, it can still get me today
Earl’s banjo on the original FMB gets my hair on fire
Song of Burnadette slays me at times if I haven’t heard it for a while, as does Famous Blue Raincoat (not actually from my youth, tho) 
Sappy love songs like Close To You by The Carpenters can almost turn me back into a blubbering fool

My parents were audiophiles. Had a nice system. So everything from Cream to Eagles sounded so good.

Stones, Zepplin, Skinnard, Boston, Kansas, Foghat, Kiss, AC-DC, Who, Sweet, Nazereth, etc. it was the generation just before disco.

I remember one song that really hit me hard when I broke up with a boyfriend way back when. Anytime I hear it, play it or sing it, it brings back not so happy memories.  The song is "It's All In The Game".

There are many songs that I sing and pick that Dave and I used to play together and many of them bring back bitter-sweet memories our years together,

I grew up playing C&W music of the day with my parents who were both very good musicians on pedal steel and piano.
Mom would send away for the sheet music for certain record albums that her and dad liked.
She easily sight-read those songs and me and dad learned them (if the songs were new) and he already knew the older ones..
I often play the old country stuff with the country folks around here and like singing Detour and Columbus Stockade which are very familiar songs to many in the audience.

I am always taken back to my early days playing in the living room with Mom and Dad whenever I get to play old country with my friends and hearing a good steel player always makes me think of how Dad would've played it.

When I was in high school (2006-10) I was really into rap music. Music from artists of that era (Lil Boosie, Project Pat, E-40, Plies, etc.) still gets me going.

I recently got a big subwoofer for my car and started collecting cds of all that stuff I used to listen to. The sub does a great reproduction of a stand up bass too!

What gets me is when a song I HATED from my childhood comes on and I get that warm fuzzy feeling anyway.

I mean, I started singing along to a Carpenters song the other day! Well, it could have been worse... could have been Helen Reddy [shudder]

Maggie May. Mom said I used to sing that around the house as a toddler. I still like it and it takes me back to those days.

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Originally posted by Mickhammer

What gets me is when a song I HATED from my childhood comes on and I get that warm fuzzy feeling anyway...

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That's me and disco! I hated disco, in fact I was in my 20's when rock radio stations held disco record smashing parties etc. Now, over 40 years later, Donna Summers can melt me in my tracks and gets me embarrassingly teary. Staying Alive is just as good as any of those old heavy rockers. Etc.

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Originally posted by Dean T

quote:

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Originally posted by Mickhammer

What gets me is when a song I HATED from my childhood comes on and I get that warm fuzzy feeling anyway...

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That's me and disco! I hated disco, in fact I was in my 20's when rock radio stations held disco record smashing parties etc. Now, over 40 years later, Donna Summers can melt me in my tracks and gets me embarrassingly teary. Staying Alive is just as good as any of those old heavy rockers. Etc.

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If you had told back then that one day I'd be getting down to Le Freak C'est Chic, I'd have kicked you with my steel-toed boot.

That would be surf music (Dick Dale et al), not only the first music that caught my attention as a kid, but associated with a lifestyle, with a time and a place.

The music of my youth is so old that it is starting to come back as bluegrass. Jaelee Roberts doing Stuck in the Middle With You, Rick Feris with The Power of Love, Iron Horse doing Rocket Man. It's all coming back.

The specific memory music would include:

Maximum Darkness by Man (a live album with guest John Cippolina from Quicksilver Messenger Service). (Driving home for Christmas with my parents and brother)
Barclay James Harvest Live 74 (school)
Rolling Stones Honky Tonk Woman (the first tune I recorded on cassette tape from the radio)
Hi Ho Silver Lining (school years parties)
The Damned - New Rose (brother)
The Stranglers - No More Heroes (more parties)
Space - Magic Fly - when I realised that synth disco was also great. (It came out before I Feel Love). The memory is the choice between this and Wind and Wuthering by Genesis. I made the right one.
And of course Hawkwind - Roadhawks the best ever compilation album, a Christmas present, and when I knew this was my forever number one band.

I was an outlier. Big band and Dixieland at first, then right to Pete Seeger, the NLCR and bluegrass. I never engaged with rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis, et. al.

Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, New Lost City Ramblers, Greenbriar Boys, classical music, calypso music, Martha Schlamme, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Harry and Jeannie West, Chuck Berry, and other folk musicians who played in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Forever young.... Alphaville 1984. Hard to listen to, getting a tad older but yearn for those bygone days.... family.... thank God I have had the Banjo and Bluegrass to help me as I age...

Music can provide a powerful emotional connection to time and place. I doubt there’s anyone with hearing, who hasn’t experienced this.

I wonder how a deaf person's brain adapts this auditory connection? When one sense is suppressed, another is heightened. Probably for a deaf person this becomes hot-wired to other sensory stimuli like visual or olifactory? Smell is another powerful flashback prompt we all experience.

When we are very young, we are acutely sensitive to what is different to the familiar of the small family bubble we inhabit. I have much older sisters. They brought new and unfamiliar sounds home from the wider world.

The extraordinary 10 second feedback intro to ‘I Feel Fine’ by the Beatles will flash me back to very early childhood. I was too young to have any idea what 'the Beatles' were or what on that 45rpm disc was making that sound. But that 10 seconds of sensory overload was electrifying and instantly exciting…and seared into my consciousness. Pure sound.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WrAV5EVI4tU&ra=m

I’ve got a band I call Jed Zeplin. We play mostly 60s and 70s pop tunes bluegrass style.
Some of out favorite: Bus Stop,I’ve just seen a face,You belong to me,You can close your eyes,Good time Charlie’s got the blues,Long train running,Winnie the Pooh,Space oddity,please come to Boston,Don’t cross the River,Machine gun Kelly,Sylvia’s mother,Wichita lineman and many others I can’t think of this late.
I also have a band that does mostly old country songs,also bluegrass style. I call that band Running with scissors.

im amazed that I can remember the words to all these songs,I don't use an I pad. Two of the guys in my country band would be lost without them. 
     I've been blessed with a good memory,especially the ones I learned 50 or 60 yrs ago. 

Good on ye, Rod. I played and sang -- solo and with a group -- for many years and many, many songs, with no cheat sheets; but these days I won't sing "Happy Birthday" without one!

Here ya go: We had a pinion pine contract over by the Flattops. (this was very remote) I remember taking a break with taco flavored Doritos, Pepsi, and a boom-box. I had two tapes. Saturday night Fever, and Wanted the Outlaws. You can bout imagine which my boss liked. He was a five foot tall Okie. He loved to play football amongst the stumps.