Famous Prom Songs From My Era

Let's pass that way again keeping some secrets

On long car rides through the mountains, my mind drifts, hopefully not when I’m the driver, but when Willie’s Road House is playing country tunes from the 60s and 70s, who knows what thoughts might invade my mind, what memories will recur as if they had been forgotten, mislaid, or neglected?

So, I have no understanding why this epochal remembrance came hurtling through time and space last weekend, but when it did, I got jolted by the fact that next summer marks my 50th high school graduation anniversary. It doesn’t feel like 50 years, as if I know what five decades should feel like.

When I think of music from the early 1970s, it’s funny to me that the era really feels like a few days ago. Maybe that’s because this music is never far from, or perhaps always on my mind. Even the gushy songs, the ones that the popular crowd loved.

The ones that always got nominated for Prom and club lead-out themes.

At the risk of not only showing my age, but making you wince, gasp, and otherwise reach for a good stiff bourbon (and you might be needing whatever single barrel option you have; mine is 4 Roses), I have eight songs that I know formed that magic moment for Bessemer, Alabama, couples as they stood in tuxes and formal gowns, waiting to be photographed under a flowerful arch. Waiting to have that spotlight dance together. Or waiting for after-prom, whatever world it might open for one or both.

Disclaimer: the only one of these events I attended during high school was my senior prom. We double-dated, though the couple who drove us to the prom was not the couple who drove us home. Read this carefully:

It’s not a good idea to host your prom at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge. But if you choose that route, it’s an even worse idea to bring a flask of whiskey into the event, because 17 year olds cannot be inconspicuous when they pour.

They’re also underage, even in Alabama.

At this event, my date and I got to dance our big moment to the theme song of the party, a song made popular by in that moment, soon-to-be-dead Jim Croce:

It’s not that we were unique in selecting this song. In fact, for this and the other seven songs, I wonder how many lead-outs and proms were based on them? How many hearts melted or drifted away, or were joined in such moments? As touch as we thought we were at 17 (Cue Janis Ian here), we were also hopelessly sentimental, which sometimes is a synonym for romantic.

Remember as I list these next songs that they were supposed to be commentaries on life as high schoolers knew and felt it back then. Also, do these things still happen?

Song #2:

When this song first appeared, I didn’t have a girl friend and had barely kissed anyone. Would I have loved to have danced with someone to it? That’s a rhetorical question for those who wonder.

The audience there is either rapt or comatose.

Song #3:

I have to refrain from sarcasm after every one of these. In the moment, it felt as true as anything else, and in fact, for many of us, it was.

Song #4

See if you can guess. It’s from a second album by a band named for a city, though originally the name was for a public governance body means.

Got it?

This song was the flip side to “Make Me Smile,” a song I truly love though one that might fare badly as a theme for teenagers. My Dad loved “Color My World,” which didn’t make me smile at the time but surely does now.

Song #5:

Maybe this next one would have been better paired with the Seals & Crofts tune above. This one goes out to Susan, wherever she is (she wasn’t my date; that would have been Vicky):

Such a great movie. Who were we back then? Another rhetorical question, so don’t answer or worry.

Song #6:

I’m a sucker for 3 Dog Night, the first band I ever saw in concert, in 1970 for $4. And no, no one should have nominated maybe their greatest song: “Easy To Be Hard.” But “Pieces of April,” given that April is Prom month, works so well, doesn’t it?

Song #7

This song should count double. because our high school choir, The Bessemer Singers (catchy, right?), featured it in our spring production in 1973. I think The Carpenters were always misunderstood. Sonic Youth thinks so, too, as their cover of “Superstar” attests. That was too lonesome for a prom song, but weren’t we all groupies of some sort anyway?

Finally, Song #8

How can I describe for you how big this song was? How many tears were shed listening to it? How could you not love the one who loved it?

Now there have to be other songs I’ve forgotten (willfully or not), so if you think of any or want to nominate some, please do so. Also, which song did you dance to at your special event/moment back in the days when life seemed still somewhat innocent and you had world enough and time to be whatever you wanted to be?

And, if you selected something like this,

or anything else wonderfully inappropriate, mention those songs, too, with explanations of who, what, when, why, and how they became “Your Song.”

As a final thought, why didn’t we pick this one?