Folks, you shouldn't stress too much about the song selection; what makes the song appropriate, *whatever* it is, is how it fits in to that time of your life when school was behind you (at least for the year) and your future was ahead of you, still undefined and full of potential and mystery. And maybe there was someone special to you at that time, and maybe there wasn't, but the important part is, connecting the song to your memory. Let me bore you with this example:
I spent two years unsuccessfully learning to swim. The instructors at the Chicago YMCA and then my suburban junior high-school gym class all just didn't have the patience to work with me one-on-one at my pace. I had trust issues, insecurities about water in my eyes and up my nose, having nearly drowned around 1970 on a family trip some years before... At the "Y" and in gym class, they threw me into the deep diving well in the old "caveman" teaching style to "force" me to swim, ...only to see me drop like a rock and stay down until they brought out the big pole and hook.
Then... 1974, deep into summer, and a 50-thousand-watt clear-channel-blowtorch, WLS-AM Chicago is playing the bejeesus out of "Rikki, Don't Lose that Number" by Steely Dan. Heavy rotation, twice an hour, every hour. It's playing over the crummy PA speakers at the park district pool behind my house, where I'm spending pretty much every day of my summer break after summer math and typing classes, thrashing around to stay cool. I'd taken the Park District swimming course in this pool the month before... and failed yet again. Or so I thought. One afternoon, I'm chilling to "Rikki" and I just relaxed and it came to me: I suddenly could relax and float like a cork, no struggling. Added the arm and leg movements and I suddenly ...I could swim! Nobody believed me; neither lifeguards nor my own family - they all thought I was using my extreme beanpole height and freakishly-long legs to walk across the pool bottom while flailing my arms and splashing on top. Until I did a few laps across the 12-foot diving well in front of them and also dog-paddled a bit. And then took a dive off the low board.
From then on, that summer of '74, I was mostly an aquatic life form; living there from opening to close, getting tremendous sunburns, swimming and trying to meet girls, and hearing that song and smelling the heavy chlorine used to sanitize the water. Forty years later, and the smell of pool chlorine instantly still makes the opening chords of "Rikki" come to mind, ...and the reverse, too: If I hear the song, I could swear I smell bleach. This is my moister version of Proust and his madelines.
So the point is, you're connecting music to a memory. It can be any music; even a TV show theme or a jingle. As long as it lights up a memory. Have at it! And I want to hear your stories of your memory connections!