I heard the Lauryn Hill song “Every Ghetto, Every City” while I was riding the train yesterday and it got me thinking: what’s the best song ever about looking back on childhood? I’ll go with “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder, but I also like the Van Morrison song “Take Me Back” (especially the whacked out version JLL does in “Georgia”, as awful as it is). What else is good?
Please, don’t mention that Nickelback song “Photograph”, not even as a joke. There’s nothing funny about an existential threat.
Anya
Nickelback, Canada’s worse crime against humanity.
Yutsano
Sometimes you just gotta go with the Boss.
Southern Beale
Americans have weird hobbies.
That is all.
Joey Maloney
REM, “Nightswimming”.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Did you ever come up with too many jokes at once? Yeah, I’m right there…
ralphdibny
@Yutsano: I was thinking Glory Days, but that one works too.
Anya
@Anya: why can’t I edit the damn comment?
Southern Beale
@Yutsano:
Still trying
c u n d gulag
Well, it’s not quite ‘childhood,’ but as I grow older, I love Frank Sinatra’s “It Was A Very Good Year:”
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank+sinatra/it+was+a+very+good+year_20056372.html
Also too – Melanie’s “Brand New Key:”
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/boogienightsvol1/brandnewkey.htm
Nina
Cattle and Cane, The Go-Betweens
Southern Beale
A song about looking back on childhood? Can’t believe nobody mentioned “Butterfly Kisses.”
{ ducks … runs from room ….}
wrb
another Van- Redwood Tree
Catfish John
red dog
Harry Belafonte’s “Man Piaba”. “when I was a lad just three foot three, certain questions occurred to me”.
Was recorded sometime in the mid ’50s.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
ass ponys
little bastard
Nicole
@red dog: I. Love. That. Song. Since I was five years old (we had his Live at Carnegie Hall on 8-track). Though I didn’t get the full hilarity then.
Matthew Reid Krell
Careful now, Rick Santorum has accused Obama of being a Nickelback fan. So all us Obots need to line up behind the President.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: That’s it. I’m sending Bnut on a mission after you. And no one tickles like a Marine. Yer in trouble now lady! :)
(Dammit, doing a half-shift at work but I’ll try to stay in touch as much as I can.)
Southern Beale
Sarah Hickman had a great song that fits the bill but I can’t remember the name of it offhand.
Nicole
@Southern Beale:
I believe the topic was “songs about looking back on childhood” not “songs about a parent’s repressed pedophilia/incest.”
Irony Abounds
Neil Diamond with Shilo and Brooklyn Roads
Cassidy
Summer of 69- Bryan Adams
Polish the Guillotines
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: Holy cow. I was thinking about this exact song. Nice.
Growing up in Berkeley, I have to nod in the direction of locals, the Mister T Experience:
Now We Are Twenty-One.
It was an anthem for me and my friends.
dj spellchecka
gerry goffin and carole king’s “going back”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHb7RFpoxU
Nina
Story of My Life, Social Distortion.
Raven
Child’s Song Tom Rush.
Tomorrow I’ll be in some other sunrise
Maybe I’ll have someone at my side
Steve M.
“Dirty Dream Number Two” by Belle and Sebastian is the best song ever about looking back on pubescent wet dreams.
Cassidy
@Nina: Or this one.
dj spellchecka
jayhawks “10 little kids”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goox4SnszCw
Raven
Volunteers
One generation got old
One generation got sold
This generation got no destination to hold
Pick up the cry
John - A Motley Moose
“Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin
wrb
The Clothes Line Saga
whether by the Roaches
or the original from The Basement Tapes
Raven
Hope I Die Before I Get Old!
Jim C
Old Days by Chicago. The lyrics may be a bit Boomer-centric, but the harmonies …
Raven
Beeswing RT
I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me
Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay.
And you wouldn’t want me any other way”
Keith G
“At 17” Janis Ian
Jewish Steel
Mother by the Plastic Ono Band.
It’s nice & direct.
Tom The First
Lazy Old Sun by The Kinks.
eemom
@c u n d gulag:
Have you ever heard The Kingston Trio’s version of “A Very Good Year”? It’s hauntingly beautiful, vastly better than Sinatra’s overorchestrated schmaltz. Unfortunately I can’t find a video.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Really, you’re doing a thread about songs, and you’re doing the “make sure it’s only songs I might like” thing? I just don’t understand why people do that with music. I would say it’s a get off my lawn thing, but people of all ages do it, and yet no one agrees on what singers fit into it.
And yes, I happen to like the Nickelback song, though it makes me think of my brother more than me. As for me, I try not to think about my childhood except for when I need to tell my kids about walking to school uphill in the snow. A movie about me going back to my childhood would consist of me screaming for two hours.
thundermonkey
That Summer Feeling by Jonathan Richman
I, Jonathan 1992 version
Jonathan Sings! 1983 version
eemom
Paradise By the Dashboard Light. Tee hee.
Mnemosyne
Slightly different, but I think “We’re Going to Be Friends” is a great song about being a child.
Also, site redesign problem: I can read the mobile site on my new iPod Touch, but opening comments crashes it. I can switch to the main site and read comments that way, but the type is miniscule. Please fix.
eemom
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
heh.
Linkmeister
The Marvelous Toy by Peter, Paul and Mary.
Nina
Rainy Night in Soho, the Pogues.
Raven
Nanci
So Long Ago
You’d gone off to fight the war when
I returned from school
I traded in my innocence when the
Springtime came to bloom
I married for my family… one night
I dreamed of you
And you were running from me in
The rain down on Congress Avenue
Where did we go?
That long ago?
So long ago
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I may set the spam filter to disallow use of the word “Nickleback”. Don’t tempt me
Nina
@Cassidy: Yes way!
eemom
Playground In My Mind
[ducks and runs]
Linkmeister
@eemom: It’s on The Capitol Years box set, but there’s apparently no video on YouTube. Rats.
RossInDetroit
Elbow. Asleep in the back. Beautiful.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@eemom:
Candy yes, but I like it too.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
And yet sometimes our American hobby weirdness is also awesome: 2012 Peeps Diorama Contest.
eemom
@Linkmeister:
And Puff! Don’t forget Puff, the Magic No It’s NOT About Smoking Dope Dragon!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Southern Beale: I actually thought they’d make an interesting charm, former prosecutor that I am. But dollhouse police scene? That ain’t right.
Raven
@eemom:
Nanci Griffith
Drive-In Movies And Dashboard Lights
Mother can’t you hear your daughter crying
Father wake up her youth is dying
Her kids are grown… Husband’s gone away
It’s a shame cuz she had such a lovely face
Can’t you see she needed more
Than, “Oh, what a pretty child”?
You never taught her truth from lie
All you told her was to smile
In Texas back in sixty-nine
It was drive-in movies and dashboard lights
eemom
re Paradise By The Dashboard Light, I’ve always thought they should just play that in HS sex ed classes and “abstinence” would teach itself.
West of the Cascades
@eemom: This. Puff pretty much sums up childhood innocence and its loss in adulthood. Probably no sadder song, either.
Raven
Lucinda
Lil Angel Lil Brother
I see you now at the piano
Your back a slow curve
Playing Ray Charles and Fats Domino
While I sang all the words
wrb
@eemom:
Wake Up Little Suzie
Mark
Bob Dylan’s Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTdZHC4McRU
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that
PLH in NYC
Green Day: I Was There
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Oh, please do! Can you set it to replace that word with ni-clang? On our soap forum if anyone types a vile slur for women, “cupcake” is displayed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: I’ll find ways to work around it unless you fix the so-pill-m problem as well.
Most of their music is kind of repetitive, but that one album was decent, and that song was pretty good. And it did fit some people I know: I wanted to relive the old days, but it seems everyone has moved on.
And anyway, there are stations around here – Dallas – where the best thing on is Bruno Mars.
Nina
Days, the Kinks.
John PM
Everclear – My daddy gave me a name (then he walked away). I love this song because the melody is so upbeat but the lyrics are a downer. I listener to it a lot before I realized what they were saying.
Steved
Paradise. John Prine.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
As an example of different tastes, I know plenty of people physically opposed to Green Day (suggested by @PLH in NYC ).
Todd Dugdale
Pink Floyd’s “Remember A Day”.
Jackson Browne’s “A Child In These Hills”.
RSA
Paul Simon, Kodachrome. (Wikipedia says that his original title was “Going Home”, but that wasn’t interesting enough.)
piratedan
I’ve been partial to this one from the Spongetones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcqV5PVEZWQ
kinda surprised no one has mentioned Penny Lane yet, but hey, ymmv
Cassidy
A little old school punk.
Johnny Coelacanth
Hmmm, the only one that jumps to mind is the awesome “Obvious Child” by Paul Simon.
pragmatism
@RossInDetroit: +1 for asleep in the back
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
I rather fancy this one, too.
gaz
Just please don’t mention Nickelback ever.
The only reason they are still around is people won’t shut up about them
News flash: They fucking suck. In fact they’ve always sucked. And always will suck. And if you think they don’t suck then that is because YOU suck.
srv
Another brick in the wall and Seasons in the Sun
Raven
@gaz: Who cares? There are plenty of morons around who like fucking Three Dog Fuckin Night.
Kiwanda
Another Kinks
Oh, those happy days of childhood:
Suzanne Vega
Nirvana
Pearl Jam
andybud
If it doesn’t have to be a happy childhood, then I recommend “All Alone in an Empty House” by Lost in the Trees.
gaz
I don’t really look back on my youth with any sort of fondness.
It was hell.
So I guess I’d have to say maybe ummm. Prison Sex by tool*?
* I don’t actually like tool. Maynard is pedo, I just know it.
punkdavid
I’ve been racking my brain for great songs about childhood, but mostly coming up with songs about youth (high school, young adulthood).
Sugar Mountain – Neil Young
The Circle Game – Joni Mitchell (which she wrote after hearing Sugar Mountain)
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – Bruce Springsteen
Mark H
Kodachrome
Arclite
My folks were Little Feat fans, so I loved “Fat man in the bathtub” (cuz that was funny to an 8 year old) and “Rocket in my Pocket” (loving spaceships, and being too young to catch any innuendo).
And I agree with @Mark H: Kodachrome and that whole Paul Simon solo album was awesome.
Oh, and the Star Wars theme, of course.
Donut
I dunno, started looking for a tune I was thinking of and came across these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel
And it’s my two favorite musicians together and all I can say is that I think I would have shit my pants if I could have seen this gig…
THE
Ode to Billie Joe Bobby Gentry
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven: Good point. While it’s certainly an interesting thread with lots of good songs mentioned, who really care which bands [any given persons thinks] suck? There are perhaps more important things to get wound up about.
Watusie
Dusty Springfield, Goin’ Back.
You Tube with awesome Dusty footage.
Quaker in a Basement
More Van:
Brown-Eyed Girl
And It Stoned Me
Robert Green
@John PM: in addition to that everclear song, a GREAT song by a TERRIBLE band,
i give you similarly crappy Blink 182’s magnum opus Stay TOgether For the Kids:
t’s hard to wake up, when the shades have been pulled shut
This house is haunted, it’s so pathetic, it makes no sense at all
I’m ripe with things to say, the words rot and fall away
What stupid poem could fix this home, I’d read it every day
So here’s your holiday,
hope you enjoy it this time, you gave it all away
it was mine, so when you’re dead and gone
will you remember this night, twenty years now lost,
it’s not right.
Their anger hurts my ears, been running strong for seven years
Rather then fix the problems, they never solve them, it makes no sense at all
I see them everyday, we get along so why can’t they?
If this is what he wants, and it’s what she wants, then why is there so much pain?
dedc79
Basically every song by the Hold Steady,but for starters: Massive Nights, Stevie Nix, Little Hoodrat Friend. Admittedly more focused on the teenage portion of childhood
That’s the Way – Led Zeppelin
Nicole
Oh! “Stones in the Road” by Mary Chapin Carpenter. Love that song.
c u n d gulag
@eemom:
Oh, I forgot!
I have a lot of their albums, since I’m a big Folk Music fan.
Frank, I have on cassette.
And, sadly, my record player broke, so I haven’t played them, or a lot of others, in years…
Nina
Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd.
FridayNext
Loudon Wainwright III’s The Picture
Steve Goodman and John Prine Souvenirs
And though SR has already mentioned it Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun
Rock
How about AM Radio by Everclear
Keith
“Saturday Morning” by the Eels
RSA
Surrender, by Cheap Trick, isn’t really a nice look back on childhood, but it’s pretty funny.
john f
Born on the Bayou by CCR.
gbear
I’ll go with ‘I Know Love Is All I Need’ by Rodney Crowell. That whole album, The Houston Kid is one of the best records about childhood and growing up that I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Just a marvelous marvelous album.
TuiMel
@Nicole:
That’s the one that immediately came to my mind, as well.
Donut
@Robert Green:
An awful lot of kids will look back on Blink182 as their intro to rock. Taste is what it is and there’s no accounting for it, as the cliche goes, but there’s nothing wrong with kids liking the Blink back in the day.
—
Back to the point, when I first heard Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia,” in a lot of respects it rang pretty true for me, as a kid eho grew up in the same era.
Nicole
I confess to weeping my eyes out listening to “Shades of Grey” by the Monkees. I also confess, I was 14 at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
The Clash: Stay Free.
Even better, The Alarm: Spirit of 76
Robert
“Wasteland” by The Jam
Joel
Slick Rick’s comeback album (after being released from jail) was pretty terrible, but this song was pretty great.
PaulB
Puff, the Magic Draqon. The wonders of childhood and the pain of growing up.
wrb
not a happy one but
Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
which caused me to think of
Red Dirt Girl Emmy Lou
My Little Town Simon and Garfunkel
Hickory Wind The Byrds/Gram Parsons
In South Carolina
there’re many tall pines
I remember the oak trees
that we used to climb
But now when I’m lonesome
I always pretend
I’m getting the feel
Of hickory wind
ruemara
I don’t get the nostalgia.
gluon1
Somewhat outside the stylings of many Juicers, but Kam’s “Still Got Love 4 Um” is rather full of love and nostalgia.
kd bart
All these comments and no one mentioned “Penny Lane” by The Beatles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd-oLhJQne0
PurpleGirl
Gee, nobody commented on the post title.
(Somewhere in my Youth or Childhood was a ditty composed for the movie “Sound of Music” as a story bridge. It wasn’t in the song book of the play, as I remember it.)
BruceFromOhio
Lakeside Park, Rush
Deadmans Hill, Indigo Girls
@John – A Motley Moose, @Joey Maloney: These, too.
FreeAtLast
For looking back on your children’s childhood, I love
Harry Belafontes’s Turn Around (Giving my age away, I know)
BruceFromOhio
Ack, overlinked and moderated. Must’ve been the Indigo Girls did me in.
Dead Mans Hill
pepper
cats in the cradle by harry chapin.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Donut:
ironically blink 182 was when i realized i was getting old.
i could have sworn the first time i heard “all the small things” that they mentioned then purdue quarterback drew brees. i know it sounds preposterous looking back on it, but after kid rock and puff daddy had just foisted their garbage on the culture at large, i didn’t imagine anything was too absurd.
asiangrrlMN
Just ‘coz I really really really like this song and it kinda fits. Cat Stevens’ Father and Son.
Mike E
Don Henley “Boys of Summer”
Peggy Lee “Is That All There Is?”
Mike E
@kd bart: In My Life!
Bob Munck
@punkdavid:
Also, according to Tom Rush, because a friend of hers had just turned 20.
“So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through”
She sent it to Tom on a cassette, apologizing to him for what bad shape it was in. He pointed out at the Birchmere last weekend that that boy is now 68.
W. Kiernan
I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
Kyle
Smoky Mountain Memories and Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton. Mary Margaret by Nanci Griffith.
red dog
@Nicole: I still know all the words. We used to sing it in high school on the bus going to basketball games.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Tear Down the House – Avett Bros.
Irony Abounds
@Nicole: Great Choice!
Stones in the Road
meyerman
Cheryl Wheeler – “I Know This Town”
kd bart
Coal Miner’s Daughter-Loretta Lynn
zonker
The Kinks “No More Looking Back” or “The First Time We Fall in Love”, I first heard those songs when I was in high school and absolutely adored them. I was such a strange little hillbilly.
Twisted Martini
Jack and Diane by Mellencamp, Subdivisions by Rush
Kathleen
@eemom: Agreed. Sinatra mentioned on a documentary that he was inspired to record the song because of the Trio.
Groucho48
Roy Clark
“Yesterday When I Was Young”
“Yesterday when I was young
the taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue.
I teased at life as if it were a foolish g ame,
the way the evening breeze may tease a candle fl ame.
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built alas on weak and shifting sand.”
Rod Stewart
“Every Picture Tells A Story”
“Spent some time feelin’ inferior
standing in front of my mirror
Combed my hair in a thousand ways
but I came out looking just the same”
kuvasz
gotta’ go with the Boss. Growing Up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dy7RTicVr0
kth
“Strawberry Fields Forever”, Beatles
“Thirteen”, Big Star
“Helpless”, Neil Young (also “I Am a Child”, but that one’s not as good as “Helpless” or “Sugar Mountain”)
“Rock N Roll”, Velvet Underground
kth
also Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waiting For a Train” and Tom T. Hall’s “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died”, but it’s a pretty slippery slope from those songs to Walter Brennan’s “Old Rivers” (which I don’t hate but wouldn’t try to defend).
Ben Cisco (mobile)
These always remind me of childhood:
“Saturday In The Park”, Chicago
“Horse With No Name”, America
“Maybe Tomorrow”, The Jackson Five
“Summer Madness” , Kool and the Gang
“Goodbye Stranger”, Supertramp
I was a weird kid.
Groucho48
Can’t forget Night Moves, by Bob Segar, either.
Anton Sirius
I hate Nickelback as much as the next guy, but the people claiming Seasons In The Sun is a good song should probably be imprisoned, as they represent a clear danger to the public. That monstrosity is a blight upon our collective unconscious.
It’s also a song about how bittersweet it is to die or some shite like that, not a song reminiscing about childhood. It’s like saying Send In the Clowns is also about childhood because you went to the circus that one time.
Unmentioned actually great songs about childhood: Tori Amos has some fantastic ones, particularly Winter and Icicle. Arcade Fire’s Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) is a pretty brilliant take on kid’s fantasy lives too.
krahbedad
“When I Was a Boy” Dar Williams, “The Younger Generation” John Sebastian
Dr. Squid
“It’s a Sin” Pet Shop Boys
inyake
“My Block” by Scarface is solid and been getting some reps in my rotation lately. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyqs0PoBgE
Robert
“The Saturday Boy” by Billy Bragg.
At Schoolkids Records in Ann Arbor in 1986, Billy Bragg told me I was “too cheery to be socialist.” I wish he could see me now.
punkdavid
@Bob Munck:
I don’t know who the friend who turned 20 may have been, but Neil Young claims to have written Sugar Mountain on his birthday (Im think he says 19, but the evidence is that it was actually his 20th) and at the time of his 20th birthday in November 1965, he was staying with Joni and her husband.