Dear LPG,

I am old now but when I was younger I, like so many others, really enjoyed listening to music.  I think that in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s I prided myself that I knew nearly every song in the charts.  I was an avid watcher of ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘Ready Steady Go’, and I had Capital Radio playing within earshot everywhere, apart from when I was at work.  I don’t think that I can go far wrong when I say that back then music was shared and was up there with the weather when it comes to subjects that complete strangers would use to start a conversation.  I have to say that for most of my friends back then listening to the Sunday evening run down of the weekly top ten was compulsory!

I wonder if anyone else who has now accepted that they have reached that age that makes them fit into the category of ‘older people’ remembers a time in their younger years when so much was influenced by the pop songs that we listened to?  We all listened together in those days and the phrase, ‘Oh I like this one…’ meant a bit more than it does today because listening to music was much more of a shared pastime. 

It seems to me that musically, we keep up with the trend until we suddenly arrive at a period of time where we get ‘stuck’ and decide that knowing the latest pop song is not so important anymore.  We all keep up to date with our music but somewhere in our forties or fifties the charts move on but we don’t.

As I have got older I have to admit to not always remembering the two quintessential components needed to find a nostalgic song on YouTube; the name of the song and the artist who sang it, which is why I am really glad to have discovered what I did recently. 

While looking around the internet, I found a list of every top 40 pop music entry since 1970.    I think I am not far wrong when I say that there are times in our lives when something personally momentous happens and many of us remember a song that is part of that event even though the big events of our time may vary in significance.  I have found it really good to be able to find the year, look at the appropriate chart and find the name of both the song and the artist which I can copy and paste strait to YouTube’s search bar, in order to get my little hit of nostalgia.

I have asked LPG to share this URL link in the hope that it just might help many readers to enjoy a bit of their musical past.

JN, Surrey.

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