Editors Note: The dozen songs in our "most iconic song of the boomer era" poll were selected — somewhat arbitrarily — by globeandmail.com staff after some heated debate and some really bad attempts to sing old lyrics. If you disagree with our selections and want to make your own suggestions, please use this link to offer alternatives.
Meanwhile, as The Globe's James Adams writes below, it should be remembered that there were an awful lot of very bad boomer songs, too.
[Just for the record: Mr. Adams is not responsible for the selection of the 12 songs in our poll.]
When it comes to music, not a few baby boomers are quick to proclaim: "They just don't write 'em like they used to."
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Of course, in saying this, they're usually thinking about the best or most iconic songs that formed the soundtrack to their lives during the 1960s and 1970s.
But memory is a selective thing. In their hurry to stake their claim to being "the best and the brightest," boomers like to cite the enduring popularity of songs such as Van Morrison's "Brown-eyed Girl," the Byrds' "Eight Miles High," The Band's "The Weight," and Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" as examples of their superior taste.
Lest they forget, however, it was this same generation that put such banalities as Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey," "Yummy Yummy" by the Ohio Express and Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" in the toppermost regions of the pop charts.
Indeed, there are probably a whole lot of boomers out there who secretly (or perhaps not-so secretly) prefer the Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints" to "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival — proof yet again that one person's mutton can be another's lamb.
