While watching the Australian Open this last week, they played a short clip of The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights as they cut to an ad break. Both G and I started singing and continued even as the ads began to play.

“This song is addictive,” I said as we arrived at a place where we no longer knew the words. I googled it and brought it up on YouTube. “I can’t explain it but it gives me the same feeling as Robert Miles’ Children and Darude’s Sandstorm. It’s compulsive. As soon as I hear it, I have to play it on repeat until the feeling subsides. Do you know what I mean?”

We tumbled down a rabbit hole of 80s synth and 90s dream trance as we tried to find other songs that filled us with the same feeling. I still don’t know what it is about the composition that makes this music so compelling to me, I just know it floods me with memories I’m not sure I have–flashbacks of nights in clubs, dancing like I’m the only one on the floor, laughing with dates in coffee shops, screaming as I ride rollercoasters at Disneyland for the fifteenth time that day, having friends in my 20s, being liked by people; a life I only imagine.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t have friends, I didn’t go dancing and I didn’t ride rollercoasters–but there is something in this music that drives a nostalgia I cannot name. And I wouldn’t want to. It’s enough just to feel it.