Researchers say that twenty somethings like the music they heard when they were growing up because they have an emotional attachment to it.
Professor Carol Krumhansl said music has an uncanny way of bringing us back to a specific point in time and each generation seems to have its own opinions about which tunes will live on as classics.
She said: "Music transmitted from generation to generation shapes autobiographical memories, preferences and emotional responses - a phenomenon we call cascading 'reminiscence bumps'.
"These new findings point to the impact of music in childhood and likely reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment."
The study published in Psychological Science says songs popular in our early 20s seem to have the greatest lasting impact but music of our parents' younger days also evokes vivid memories.
It involved 62 college students listening to two top hits per year from 1955 to 2009 and showed personal memories linked with songs increased steadily as they got older.
Prof Krumhansl, of Cornell University in New York, said this finding makes sense since we recall more recent songs better, ascribe memories to them more easily and feel a stronger emotional connection with them.
But there was also a surprisingly drastic bump in memories, recognition, perceived quality, liking and emotional connection with the music popular in the early 1980s when the participants' parents were 20 to 25 years old.
They seemed to demonstrate a particular affinity for the songs their parents were listening to as young adults.
Previous research has shown music we encounter during late adolescence and early adulthood has the greatest impact on our lives.
But these findings suggest the music played throughout childhood can also leave a lasting impact.
And there was another smaller 'reminiscence bump' for the music of the 1960s - over two decades before the participants were born.
The researchers speculate reminiscence for this music could have been transmitted from the participants' grandparents who would have been in their 20s or 30s in the 1960s.
Another possibility - one possibly favoured by the Baby Boomer generation - is the music of the 1960s is of higher quality.
To explore the connection between autobiographical memories and musical memories Prof Krumhansl and Dr Justin Zupnick, of California University in Santa Cruz wanted to see which periods of music were most memorable, which songs conjured up the strongest feelings and which made the participants happy, sad, energised or nostalgic.
In addition participants were asked whether they remembered listening to the song by themselves, with their parents or amongst friends.
A web-based survey to explore these questions further is being launched to include a century of top hits and the researchers hope listeners of all ages - especially older adults - will participate.
Prof Krumhansl said: "It will be fascinating to see if we can trace inter-generational influences back through more generations, better understand the 'sixties' bump and look for effects of the vast changes in music technology that have occurred over the last century."