Oldies Song Quotes

Talbot's eyes widened as he recognised Daniel. The four lost boys got out of the car and stood behind their alpha. "So he's back?" Talbot asked. "Yep." I couldn't stop smiling a bit and thinking of that song from the oldies station my Grandpa Kramer used to listen to. My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble...

Apparently there aren’t enough golden oldies to fill out a whole station, because this is the fourth time we’ve heard this song since we left Chicago. Why would you go through the desert on a horse with no name? Why wouldn’t you name the fucking horse at some point?

The doo-wop stalker love song on a Cincinnati oldies station--you broke up with me because I was an obnoxious jerk and now you're dating him, so I drive by your house and stare in your window every night, thereby proving that I'm an even bigger creep than you thought

Shadow tuned the radio to an oldies station, and listened to songs that were current before he was born. Bob Dylan sang about a hard rain that was going to fall, and Shadow wondered if that rain had fallen yet, or if it was something that was still going to happen.

The oldies radio station plays pop songs that I remember from the early 2000s,

The oldies radio station plays pop songs that I remember from the early 2000s, and I stare at the yellow glow of the streetlights, wondering if I, too, am an oldie.

And as we take up our positions on the stage, we call upon the nine Muses for assistance, Calliope, who helps with the epic ballads, Euterpe, who helps with the sad songs, Erato, who helps with the confessional songs, Clio, who helps with the oldies, Melpomene, who helps with the super-tragic stuff, Polyhymnia, who helps with the religious songs, Terpsichore, who helps with the dance numbers, Thalia, who helps with the funny songs, And Urania, who helps when it gets spacey and psychedelic.

As soon as I’m in my pickup, I turn on the radio to an oldies station. John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” comes on and I feel the emotion of it spread over me like icing on a hot cake. I live this song. I am this song. I need to find a man who understands that and wants the same things I do.

One night at the Old Vicarage that winter, we listened to Ivor Novello's "Perchance to Dream" on the wireless. It was only a few years old then, and its small, haunting, fragile hit-song 'We'll Gather Lilacs' was still a tune that one heard constantly, on the wireless, from orchestras in restaurants, being whistled in the street. To this day I have only to hear the first notes, in some programme of 'Golden Oldies', to go straight back to that time. What an arid place this world would be without nostalgia.

They dance the Hoochie Coochie when work is done. They dance by the light of the Moon. Buffalo Girls are plenty smart.

Matt laughs, flipping on the radio to an oldies station. He performs every song he knows loudly and in a way meant to piss me off. Jokes on him; it has the opposite effect.

For many of the people in my immediate vicinity, it was clear that the Beatles (to say nothing of McCartney’s solo career) ceased to be a going concern once the Summer of Love commenced. Anything in the set list that was even mildly psychedelic—“The Fool on the Hill,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”—went over like Timothy Leary at the 1968 Republican National Convention. Apparently, there are still people for whom Sgt. Pepper is a radical—perhaps too radical—musical experiment. This wasn’t a classic-rock-radio crowd, it was an oldies-radio crowd. I, too, was hoping to hear my favorite Beatles hits. But I also secretly wished that McCartney would play “Temporary Secretary,” one of the battiest tracks from one of his battiest solo albums, 1980’s McCartney II. I believe that “Temporary Secretary” is a legitimately great song, even if it is totally bonkers. “Temporary Secretary” sounds like a businessman discussing his staffing practices while also imitating a car alarm. It’s genius! But the main reason I wanted to hear “Temporary Secretary” is because I knew that it would confound all of the boomers in the house who stopped following Paul McCartney’s career after he wrote “Michelle.

And now," Myriah went on, as if she and Gabbie were putting on a show. "We will perform that oldy but goody, Blue Suede Shoes by Mr. Elvis Presley." Claudia was even more impressed. Apparently, Myriah and Gabbie knew an entire rock and roll song and she didn't. Furthermore, for years, Claudia had thought that the singer's name was Elbow Presley.

HE HAS MANAGED TO BECOME NEITHER A WIZENED ORACLE NOR AN OLDIES ACT, AND HIS BEST SONGS CONVEY THE APPEALING SENSATION OF LISTENING TO A GUY WHO IS STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HE'S DOING.

The truly great songs, the ones that age and golden-oldies radio stations cannot wither, are about our romantic feelings. And this is not because songwriters have anything to add to the subject; it’s just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself.

I walked out of a chic downtown Manhattan restaurant not long ago, with friends, before we’d ordered, because the music was so loud we were reduced to making hand signals. Four gestures I remember making (the extent of my sign language) were: “thumbs down,” “knife across throat,” “this is bullshit,” and “let’s get out of here.” The cacophony, increasingly, is the point. It’s a way to keep out the oldies, of which now, I suppose, we were. When I’m trapped in a restaurant that’s playing shitty songs at defenestrating volume, I think longingly of the house rules at St. John, Fergus Henderson’s restaurant in London: “No art. No music.” To crib a line from the poet William Matthews, the jukebox plays Marcel Marceau.