The soundtrack of your youth – now playing at a supermarket near you

You’re in the produce section of your local supermarket squeezing avocados and weighing potatoes and checking to see if the bananas are past their prime when a song starts playing over the store’s loudspeakers.

As has happened countless times before the song triggers a wave of memories – of listening to it as a high school kid, of excitedly watching the music video for the first time, of wild Friday night parties, of playing air guitar in the common room, of doing the bump at makeshift discos held in classrooms, their partitions folded back to create one huge dance space.

You’ve been noticing for a long time how the precious soundtrack of your youth now plays as background music in malls, food courts, foyers, reception areas, barber shops and right here in the produce section.

It’s a slightly depressing thought.

As a teen you used to spend hours compiling mixtapes of favourite songs for friends, especially for those friends you wanted to be more than friends with.

Now your beloved playlist of pop classics that graced your formative years fill the space between the supermarket aisles.

Then, as you scan the shelves of canned fruit looking for a family-sized tin of pitted cherries, another song comes on and you freeze on the spot.

But it’s not just a song. This is the song, the one that was playing at that moment when your life changed. You felt feelings you’d never had before, feelings you’d only ever heard about, feelings you thought you might never feel.

As the moment plays out in your head tingles race across your face and down your spine.

Then the song ends and you’re back to hunting for pitted cherries.

The next time you hear the song you’re ordering a deluxe sushi pack at a shopping centre. The sensation returns.

You look at all the people walking about, ignoring the song, oblivious to the powerful meaning it holds for you.

Other cherished songs follow, their associated memories filling your head with visions of unalloyed joy.

Yet when you look up you see the songs are being blotted out by everyone but you.

Biting into your squid inari you begin feeling a little resentful.

So, this is how our precious music is now regarded. From being the soundtrack of our lives it has become the soundtrack to foot traffic.

You can’t help but notice this as you move through public spaces. Songs that mean so much to you now feel as though they mean nothing to anybody else. What is wrong with people today?

One night you go to check out the latest local hotspot.

The place is huge, packed with people at least half your age, many much younger.

They’re laughing, drinking, eating, talking, almost having to shout because the music from the teeming dance area is so loud.

And the music these young people are bouncing to?

It’s your mixtape. The one you’ve been hearing everywhere.

Songs you thought had been debased and consigned to the old-timer’s day room have instead been rejuvenated, their cultural currency as potent as ever.

The boppers are even singing along to the songs, doing air guitar and the bump – just like you did aeons ago in the makeshift classroom disco.

Then that song comes on – and there’s instant uproar. The crowd goes crazy. The feelings that usually sweep through you are intensified by the sight. It’s a beautiful sensation.

And a sobering one.

Why does your mind automatically default to the notion of a cultural divide when it comes to matters of nostalgia?

It might be comforting – and a little smug – to believe the things that defined you and your generation are exclusive possessions those of subsequent generations are somehow incapable of appreciating.

Yet you know that’s simply not true – and you don’t need to research it.

If anything, kids these days – kids being anyone who grew up with DVD players instead of VCRs – enjoy a greater connection with the culture of previous eras than their elders ever did, and they love it.

Contrary to the myth that they don’t care about anything that existed before they were born, experience reveals their passion for vintage films, music, fashions, vehicles and technologies.

Why else would vinyl still exist? Or cassette tapes? Or 17 year olds who know more about the Silent Era than you do?

Even the ritual of the mixtape persists. The form might be different, but the intent remains the same as one teen tells another how much they’d like to be more than friends.