A Child of the Fifties
"A Child of the Fifties" is a song written by Don Reid, and recorded by American country music group The Statler Brothers. It was released in September 1982 as the second single from the album The Legend Goes On. The song reached #17 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.
Content
Much like many of the Statler Brothers' songs, the song mixes a relationship with nostalgia and contemporary references. The song is a young man's somewhat bittersweet look back at his youth, the then still-relatively recent 1950s in which he grew up, and muses as the carefree days of his youth gave way to early adulthood, in which he lived through the 1960s and 1970s and now, as a father of three living in the early 1980s, he looks back with no regrets. The song also drops hints of a possibly failed marriage in the refrain.Historic and cultural references mentioned included early television and rock and roll, I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Watergate, Democrats making gains in the Senate and House of Representatives during the 1974 midterm elections and the death of Elvis Presley.