Originally Posted by SuneRylander

Whenever you were born, there was a song you couldn't get away from.

We don't think about it much, but the music playing around us as we grow up is ingrained with us for life. Whether it's Elvis Presley's '50s hits, baby-boomer classics like The Beatles' "Hey Jude," or George Michael in the '80s — an artist who more or less defined radio in that decade — for their respective generations, and usually more, they'll always be around.

While standards and novelty songs were common reaching back to radio's early peak, rock and then hip-hop slowly encroached, to the point that they're now basically in everything we hear, even if not directly. Though a throwback crooner like Pharrell's "Happy" can still pass muster.

Billboard has been tracking the top song of each year in its annual charts since 1946. Business Insider compiled each hit below so you can see, and hear, what was the soundtrack of your birth year.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Originally Posted by Exo

You think he's Paul Schrodt?

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

I don't want to embarrass myself....

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.