Grateful for a Throwback Song

I am grateful for a throwback song, a tune that takes you back.

Like how a familiar smell rewinds a memory, a sound plays back a feeling. A throwback song is a piece of me, a checkpoint in my story. It feels good to be a silly eight-year-old again, being hyperactive to dissonant sounds and even more dissonant performers. I can’t help but smile when I hear the edgy and alternative songs that rocked my twelve-year-old world, convinced that I was unearthing that which children and adults would never understand. Ah, to be sixteen again. To be sixteen and bop to pop with my teenybopper friends. To be sixteen and believe that the pop of the time was timeless; and then many years later, it turning out to be true. I still listen to those throwback songs, and I still find myself dancing with the same vigor and passion, as if the adult world hasn’t taken some of that youthfulness away.

Listening to a throwback song, I remember the happy times. I remember the silly times. I remember the ostensibly dramatic and angsty times. A throwback song was an anthem, the funk that powered my step and the drumline that thumped me into the fray. Even today, it still does.

I am grateful for a throwback song.