Songs and Memory

I thought about this while creating my Best of Summer Muxtape. The 12 songs I chose don't necessarily have a specific physical memory attached to them - yet they all share one quality. What these songs do when I hear them is transport me back to a different time. I don't necessarily hear them and think - "Wow, that was a great song" (though sometimes I do). Some of these songs make me kind of laugh that I liked them so much. Yet the fact that I have a memory of listening to them, and hearing them now transports me back to that place is what makes them special. What is also intriguing is that these songs are not at all attached to particularly good times. It is not that I want to relive those times in any way. In fact, those times were often miserable, which is why listening to the music itself is the memory and not some other event attached to it. But these aren't memories that I necessarily wish to lose - in fact, just having lived them is what makes them important. I do not have nostalgia what these songs represent - but I do like to be reminded of what I've come from.