I was listening to the new Charlie Byrd compo ‘Sixties Byrd’ last week and was struck when his version of ‘A Taste of Honey’ came on – I’d forgotten the name of the piece, so it took me a while to recall it, but I immediately thought, ‘This is SO emblematic of the era…’ It seems to encapsulate the decade, somehow.

I then thought about Harry South’s closing theme to ‘The Sweeney’, which seems to sum up the damp, washed-out grimey, beige 70s in a similar intangible way.

Any other suggestions? It’s often NOT a particular pop song but a piece of soundtrack music or suchlike. Like, that jittery flutey thing from Austin Powers, you could say, sums up the entire Swinging London thing (is that piece of music a pastiche or of the time?).