Pop music used to be such an evocative thing. You would hear a song incessantly for six weeks or so, it would storm up the charts, gingerly make its way back down again, and that time in your life would be inextricably linked with that song. Whether you liked the song or not was irrelevant, it was a timestamp on your childhood and, armed with a copy of the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles, even the most forgetful of us could probably sketch out a pretty accurate autobiography.

But our insatiable appetite for nostalgia is ironically destroying these nostalgic feelings. With 10 music television stations being pumped into my home, I can wallow for almost 24 hour a day in popular music history. The radio stations Heart, Magic and Capital Gold give us constant reminders of our past, but it’s all so omnipresent and relentless that a song like George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” no longer reminds me of trying to finish my Geography homework while my sister gazes up at a poster of Wham!, it reminds me of recent purchases of sliced bread in Costcutter. My history is slowly being overwritten. I want “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League to remind me of being ten years old in the Lake District, I don’t want it to remind me of being thirty and watching an advert for a Fiat Punto. So as a gesture I sat down for one hour to listen to Capital Gold and get some recollections down, before my sweetest memories are erased altogether.

11.03am. Isn’t She Lovely – Stevie Wonder

A reliable fallback in the world of television to accompany footage of a woman looking lovely. And wonderful. And precious. And… less than a minute old? It seems that it’s been forgotten that Stevie was actually singing about his daughter. Anyway. I imagine that a lot of men associate a particular someone with being lovely when they hear this. I certainly do. I was 5 when this would have been first played on the radio, and on one of my first days at school I fell over in the playground and a girl in the year above called Caroline was assigned the task of administering Dettol to the injury. As a result of this moment of kindness, I thought she was lovely. If you’re out there, Caroline, the wound has healed up nicely. Thank you.

11.07am. Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill

Sally Wood played the clarinet and was in my English class at school. I liked her. I heard one day that she was a big Peter Gabriel fan and I made stupid efforts to acquaint myself with his back catalogue. All his albums were called “Peter Gabriel”, which made things somewhat confusing. I found the music overblown and pretentious, but after sitting through a song called “Moribund The Burgemeister” I was relieved to find this track. I knew this one, I could sing along with it, and everything. I’m actually pleased to hear this again. I haven’t heard it for years. Sally’s not with us any more. Feeling a bit depressed, actually.

11.12am. Soft Cell – Tainted Love

It’s a mainstay of shit discos, wedding receptions and kareoke, but my over-riding memory of this and Soft Cell in general was being in the school dinner queue and Edward Leigh telling me that Marc Almond had a pierced nipple. I could not begin to understand why he might have decided to get this done, what it might be like to have a hot needle fired into your body, and above all what it might look like. This was my first knowledge of body piercing. It’s easy to be blasé nowadays, but for a sheltered lad growing up in Dunstable, this was akin to being told the facts of life. Not that I was ever told about that. Page 132, Combined Science Book 1, provided that information to me. And I suspect many others from repressed households. Anyway. Onward.

11.17am. Dr Hook – When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman

Nope. This doesn’t remind me of anything. All I can think of is that ridiculous live performance video that I’ve seen a million times on VH1. The odd man with the maracas and the eyepatch, a combination of instrument and accessory that never really caught on internationally. And the singer… Big red beard, I think. This song is strange. It really is the paranoid ravings of a madman. “When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, you’ve got to watch your friends.” Jesus. “When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, it never ends.” He’s certainly making it sound like an attractive proposition.

11.21am. Abba – Take A Chance On Me

With the mass of nostalgia surrounding this band I’m surprised I associate this song with anything other than dismal 90s cover versions or even more dismal 21st century West End musicals. But I have a clear image of my dad dancing in my Grandad’s living room in Ulverston. My dad is 6’7” tall and “dancing” consists more of making a number of pixie-like steps, with his hands raised to shoulder height and wearing a quite absurd grin. As you might imagine, this is a picture I find impossible to erase, even though I haven’t seen him doing it for, what, six weeks or so.

11.26am. Spandau Ballet – True

Ugh. The final school disco number. For the luckier of you it may have been Hey Jude, but for us it was this lump of insincere codswallop. But despite featuring consistently in hormone-charged teenage parties I attended, the over-riding memory of this song is being on a 53 seater coach returning from Germany, where the school band had paid a visit to Dunstable’s twin town of Porz-am-Rhein. I had had a dreadful week. We had to stay with local families, and it had been deemed that I would get on best with a lad who had no friends and who never went out, called Klaus Klook. Klaus was a bastard. Whether he meant to or not, he prohibited me from having a good time. The only thing that saved the trip was buying “17 Seconds” by The Cure with a 20 Mark note that Klook’s dad had slipped me over breakfast. On the way home to England we all had to listen to “Now That’s What I call Music 2” or whatever, again, and again, and again. This was on it. I cried. I cried because it was so fucking rubbish.

11.32am. Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street

Easy. I’m in the back seat of my parent’s car, we’re going to Brighton for a relative’s birthday, but this is pre-M25 days. We’re stuck in the most appalling traffic imaginable in Central London. I’m feeling ill. Really ill. There’s nothing to drink in the car. And to make it worse, there’s a saxophone solo. We get to Brighton eventually, very late. I am as sick as a dog. And as always happens in my life, if I’m as sick as a dog, there’s always large amounts of fantastic food on offer that I’m unable to enjoy. Typical. This is not a happy memory. Next.

11.36am. ELO – Mr Blue Sky

Oh, I loved this song. I think it has all the ingredients that make a six year old boy happy. For a start, no stuff about girls. Why would a grown man want to sing about girls when he could sing about the sun shining brightly? So my recollection, vivid as anything, is lying in bed on a Sunday morning listening to Ed Stewart do the kids programme on Radio 1. I’m looking at a map of the world that was stuck on my wall. When “Mr Blue Sky” is playing, I’m sure I could tell you the location and capital city of every country on the planet. As soon as the overblown orchestral finale disappears, I’m back to having to look it up in an Atlas. Funny thing, memory.

11.41am. Paul Young – Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)

Clarks Shoes. Definitely. For a period of time in 1983 Clarks gave away a free 7” single with every pair of unfashionable shoes that your mother would buy and force you to wear. As if KC & The Sunshine Band et al would sweeten the pill of being jeered at by your mates who came to school in trendy parkas and bowling shoes. Anyway, My sister chose this. I had not yet bought a record at this point and I was jealous. So, Paul Young equals clumpy shoes and jealousy.

11.46am. The Beach Boys – Wouldn’t It Be Nice

I first heard this on the mono cassette recorder we used to take on family car journeys. I heard it when I was a student, when I bought Pet Sounds because everyone said it was the greatest album ever made. I even heard it two months ago when I went to see Brian Wilson play on the South Bank. But this has just come on the radio and I think of Evian. Crispy white TV images, computer graphics, and bottled water. Maybe my head is too susceptible to advertising, but this is certainly a sorry state of affairs. I’ll have to listen to this song repeatedly whilst staring at a photo of an orange Vauxhall Astra to try and get the original memory back.

11.51am. Simon And Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

My French teacher was a musical lady, I remember. She used to sing French songs to us in class. I particularly remember “Le Coq Est Mort”. It was a sad song. “Il ne diner plus, coq-o-di, coq-o-da.” There’s something quite surreal about being serenaded by a grown woman telling you that the cockerel’s dead and as a consequence he’s not going to be eating any more. Anyway, Mrs Keane would sometimes take assembly. My dad’s a teacher and I know that it’s sometimes a trial to think of what you’re going to say to the children. Mrs Keane solved this problem once by bringing in Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits and playing it. School hall. Winter Sat in rows on the floor. Smell of cheap disinfectant. Just how Paul Simon would have wanted.

11.55am. Roy Orbison – Pretty Woman

Every Sunday night my dad would get out an old 45rpm singles player and he and I would listen to Buddy Holly, The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, and the Big O. So I see our strange living room combination of orange sofa and turquoise carpet (this was the mid 70s, after all) and…oh, hang on, it’s my dad dancing again. This must stop.