What was your dad rocking out to on Father's Day the year you were born?

It’s all right there in the chorus: “Groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon.” The Young Rascals’ classic summer jam conjures visions of grilling in the backyard and kicking back to watch a baseball game.

The hit single from Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” features Simon & Garfunkel at their harmonizing best. It’s impossible not to think of the great Anne Bancroft as the seductress of the song’s title – which might make dad a little nervous around younger men on the make.

The Beatles had entered the final phase of their career when they knocked out this bluesy rocker on the rooftop of their Apple recording studio in London. Billy Preston’s Hammond organ wizardry gives the song a soulful vibe that makes you wistful for what The Beatles might’ve become had they stayed together through the 1970s.

This melancholy ballad is all Paul McCartney, and it’s all but ruined by Phil Spector’s oppressive production that slathers on strings and a full choir. It was The Beatles’ last No. 1 single, released a month after McCartney announced he was leaving the band. A more stripped-down version of the song was released decades later, and it lets the beautiful melody do all the work.

Carole King finally emerged from behind the scenes as a singer-songwriter with the LP “Writer” in 1970. But her real breakout as a solo artist was the multi-platinum classic “Tapestry," which produced this hit single (accompanied by a b-side, “I Feel the Earth Move," that’s every bit its equal).

The songwriting duo of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley composed this ditty for the “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” soundtrack in 1971, and it became a No. 1 hit for Sammy Davis Jr. — the only one in his career — a year later. Amusingly, Davis hated the song. 

Paul McCartney formed his new band in 1971 and immediately began churning out hit songs. “My Love” is easily one of Wings’ most mawkish efforts, but it was probably the soundtrack to many a romantic evening in 1973.

This oddly up-tempo song tells the tragic story of Billy, who enlists to fight in an unnamed war and ignores the wishes of his girlfriend by getting himself killed on the field of battle. It’s odd that a song about bravery in battle would rocket to No. 1 at a time when the Vietnam War was hugely unpopular, but very little about the 1970s made sense. 

Neil Sedaka wrote and released a version of this song in 1973 as an attempted comeback, but it failed to catch on in the United States. Two years later, Captain and Tennille gave it an amiable, easy-listening feel, and the song haunted radios all summer long.

Paul McCartney’s rock group was at the height of its popularity in 1976, with the dual release of “Wings at the Speed of Sound” and the live album “Wings Over America.” This is one of the band’s poppier tunes, but it’s an irresistible earworm with utterly inane lyrics.

Fleetwood Mac was experiencing a good deal of inner turmoil in 1977, as band members went through several breakups and heartbreaks. This beautiful lament by Stevie Nicks captures all of this with the haunting refrain, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining/Players only love you when they’re playing.”

Disco hadn’t quite died when the younger brother of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb capitalized on the family’s club-friendly sound with this groovy track about, um, shadow dancing. All that matters is that it kept booties shaking on the dance floor.

The Queen of Disco had one of her biggest hits with this rock-inflected track featuring a guitar solo from Steely Dan’s Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. The song became a sensation all over again in 1997 when it was featured in the male-stripper comedy, “The Full Monty.”

This pop-funk group out of Minneapolis — what funky elixir was coursing through that city’s water supply in the 1980s? — had its only real hit with this song about traveling to the fictional land of “Funky Town.” It was one of the last true disco hits, and Lipps Inc. failed to change with the times. The band broke up in 1983.

While The Eagles are one of the ultimate love-them-or-hate-them bands, it’s difficult to find anyone with an unkind word for Joe Walsh. His scorching guitar licks on “Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane” are all-timers, while his solo work has always catchy and agreeably sardonic. “A Life of Illusion” is a more laid-back track for Walsh. Younger listeners might recognize it as the opening song in Judd Apatow’s “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

1982 was a big year for John Cougar. After years of failing to capitalize on his minor radio hit “I Need a Lover,” he finally cracked the mainstream with his LP “American Fool,” which featured two smash hits, “Jack and Diane” and “Hurts So Good.” The latter blasted from boom boxes and car stereos all summer long.

Everyone’s favorite song about stalking was a massive hit for The Police, who broke up a year after this track and the LP “Synchronicity” turned them into the most popular rock band in the world. Between Top 40 radio and MTV, “Every Breath You Take” was inescapable; interestingly, it took years for people to properly read it as a song told from the point of view of a possessive ex-lover.

The former Jefferson Airplane officially embraced the synthesizer era with this somewhat forgotten hit single. It was a transitional period for the band; a year later, a lawsuit filed by original member Paul Kantner forced the group to drop the “Jefferson” from the name and become plain, old Starship. Some of the band's biggest hits ever (e.g. “We Built This City” and “Sara”) were on the horizon.

This Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band knockoff rose to popularity via their soundtrack for the cult hit “Eddie and the Cruisers.” Their brand of blue-collar rock briefly found an audience, culminating in this No. 1 hit that, at best, sounds like a rejected track from “Born in the U.S.A.”

With the notable exception of Prince, no one was more prolific as a songwriter in the 1980s than Phil Collins. He skipped back and forth between Genesis and solo LPs, and if one is being honest, it all sounds the same. “Invisible Touch” is an infectious song about an amazing woman who appears to be driving Mr. Collins quite insane.

This was the main theme to “Beverly Hills Cop II,” and it was every bit as popular as the Eddie Murphy-led sequel. It’s a souped-up song for a highly stylized summer action film from Tony Scott. You can practically smell the exhaust fumes and burning rubber wafting off this one.

The David Lee Roth glory days of Van Halen were long gone by 1988. Sammy Hagar turned the once formidable metal group into a bro band, but Van Halen’s fan base largely stuck with them, turning this forgettable track into the first No. 1 single off “OU812.” 

This isn’t one of Stevie Nicks’s most memorable melodies, but the lyrics are remarkably poignant. It’s about a woman making peace with her single, childless life. As one of the most beloved recording artists of the last quarter century, it’s no surprise listeners turned the song into a No. 1 hit.

The bearded Houstonians were well past their prime when they dropped this flavorless slab of blues rock. The song got a lot of radio play and MTV airtime due to its inclusion on the “Back to the Future Part III” soundtrack, but it quickly faded. Alas, it lacked legs.

Sammy Hagar was in his fifth year of shredding this once-great band’s legacy, and this faux-blues single may be one of his most ghastly atrocities. It was the first single off the band’s cheekily-titled LP “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” and it would be quickly overshadowed by the power anthem “Right Now.”

Now this is blues rock done right. The Marietta, Georgia, outfit broke through with 1990s “Shake Your Money Maker,” and came right back with the even bluesier “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.” This was the lead single, and it verily reeks of barbecue and cheap beer.

Lenny Kravitz revs this track up with a nasty guitar lick, and the song squeals out of the blocks like a finely tuned sports car. Kravitz handled most of the instrumentation on this song, which remains the apex of his long-rocking career.

No one churned out more banal music in the 1990s than Collective Soul. “Shine” was their first hit, and it dominated the Billboard charts and MTV for a seeming eternity. There was good music in the 1990s; it didn’t all die with Kurt Cobain. But it was hard to think rock-'n'-roll wasn’t on life support every time this godforsaken song squealed from the radio.

The second year in a row Collective Soul had the No. 1 hit on Father’s Day. It was as if the music industry had declared war on fatherhood. The band kept coughing up insipid hits for years to come, though its popularity finally began to wane in the late 2000s.

Metallica had been one of the most popular heavy metal bands for close to a decade and yet didn’t score a No. 1 Billboard hit until this moody track dropped in 1996. Metallica was changing up its sound a bit with this album, which turned off some hardcore fans who wanted more “Master of Puppets.” This song is so reminiscent of Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days” that the demo track was titled “F.O.B.D.”

Having forever sullied Van Halen with his vastly unappealing style of crotch rock, Hagar went solo and continued his assault on music in general. This is a wretched attempt at Southern rock, featuring Slash on guitar and, inexplicably, Huey Lewis on harmonica. 

This short-lived rock band didn’t make much of an impact on the popular culture, but they somehow got enough radio play to push this pallid piece of blues rock to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. One interesting note: The band’s leader, Damon Johnson, later played with a re-formed Thin Lizzy.  

Buckcherry was briefly a thing at the turn of the millennium, and “Lit Up” was its big summer hit. It would be a forgettable song were it not for its unabashedly pro-cocaine lyrics. The entire song is about bumping rails, with its chorus repeating over and over “I love the cocaine.” 

This was a standalone single for Metallica, recorded for the “Mission: Impossible 2” soundtrack, and it’s pretty standard-issue as far as the band’s output goes. This was the last Metallica song to feature bassist Jason Newsted.

Staind was one of the most popular post-grunge bands of the early 2000s, and it was this power ballad that really put them on the map. Their association with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst certainly helped them to find a mass audience, and they’re still at it today.

The lead singers of Nickelback and Saliva came together for this power ballad featured on the soundtrack for Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man.” It’s nothing special, but the overwhelming popularity of the movie helped propel it to a long stay at No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

When Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell came together with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello to form Audioslave, their success was a given. “Like a Stone” was the second single off their debut LP, and its lyrics led fans to wonder if the song was written about the deceased Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley. Cornell has vehemently denied this.

Another summer, another hit song from a rock-'n'-roll supergroup. This time it was Velvet Revolver, which blended members of Stone Temple Pilots and Guns N’ Roses. Their sound was closer to STP with a little Alice in Chains mixed in and is best exemplified by “Slither.”

This is one of several hits off of Green Day’s smash LP “American Idiot,” and, like many songs on the album, it’s critical of the then presiding George W. Bush administration. It’s a powerful anti-war track that was recently retrofitted to lambaste President Donald Trump.

The first single off the band’s “Stadium Arcadium” once again reunited the boys with their favorite producer, Rick Rubin. After years of experimentation, the band pretty clearly settled on a sound with “Californication.” “Dani California” would be at home on any RHCP LP from the last decade.

This Rick Rubin-produced track opens with an intriguing piano riff on John Carpenter’s theme to “Halloween” before blowing out into a typical, overwrought Linkin Park song. It’s not exactly a carefree summer song, with self-flagellating lyrics like “I’ll face myself to cross out what I’ve become,” but, hey, sometimes people want to be depressed at cookouts.

The traditional dad aversion to high-gloss pop music took a holiday over the summer of 2008 when Katy Perry dropped this hilariously shallow yet insanely catchy song about smooching a lady to make a dude jealous. Though Perry shamelessly swiped the title from Jill Sobule’s lovely track about bisexual liberation, no one seemed to care. It was the meathead, make-the-chicks-kiss anthem of ’08.

The Black Eyed Peas are masters of irresistibly corny hip-hop, and “Boom Boom Pow” might be their move-the-party masterpiece. Even the most stiff-hipped dad couldn’t help but move his rigid joints to this chart-topping single. Bonus points for its usage during the old folks montage in “Jackass 3D."

The summer of 2010 sounded an awful lot like the summer of 1997 with this throwback reggae-rock jam from The Dirty Heads and Sublime’s Rome Ramirez. It’s the kind of familiar, laid-back groove that wafts over a cookout with the friendliest of vibes. It’s no one’s favorite song, but they’ll sway to the rhythm and sip on their beer without a care in the world.

A vicious earworm that no one wants to admit they like, but it was all anyone was humming during the summer of 2011. If it sounds like a commercial jingle, that’s because it was initially written as one by the band’s frontman, Mark Foster. He gave the track a subversive twist with its lyrics from the perspective of a disaffected teenager, but this was lost on or simply ignored by the majority of listeners.

This was the summer of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and the 2012 London Olympics, but if dad was managing the playlist, you were most likely to hear The Black Keys’ “Gold on the Ceiling” blasting from the backyard speakers. Danger Mouse’s fingerprints are all over this track, which, eight years later, is still turning up in commercials. 

This song had trouble written all over it when it debuted via commercials for the provocatively shaped Beats Pill. Then the full video hit. Then the unrated video hit. Then it was all anyone could talk about. Thicke and Pharrell shamelessly purloined the groove from Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” and wound up paying for the pleasure, but only purists took issue.

Another Danger Mouse-engineered hit for The Black Keys. This track didn’t hit the ubiquitous heights of “Gold on the Ceiling," but it was still inescapable during the summer of 2014. It was at this point that the Akron, Ohio, duo earned the right to be compared to its Rubber Capital of the World brethren, Devo.

The closing track to “Furious 7” planted itself at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and stayed there for 12 weeks. In the film, it’s the somber sendoff to star Paul Walker, who died in an automobile accident before shooting had finished. But the track immediately resonated with listeners working through grief in their own lives. It’s a lift-your-glass/pour-one-out classic.

Once upon a time, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were funk-punk bad boys who played to club crowds wearing nothing but tube socks over their male members. In 2016, they’re exemplars of dad rock. This is basically a soft-funk reworking of “I Keep Forgetting” — or “Regulate” without the ominous tale of a carjacking foiled by a pistol packing badass with a silky sweet tenor. If you enjoy the motions, the Chili Peppers know how to go through them.

The soundtrack to many an NBA Finals timeouts wound up being the cookout song of the summer for dads who grew up thinking Oasis was the apotheosis of rock-'n'-roll. Imagine Dragons are good at what they do (and, hey, they snagged Dolph Lundgren for the video), but when your music sounds like it was written to sell cars, maybe what you do is evil. 

People like Drake! Why? The same reason they dug MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and The Average White Band: He sounds like the thing without being the thing. Drake is a competent emcee who works with top-tier producers to make music that’s a catchy facsimile of the really good hip-hop people with taste enjoy. In other words: It’s dad hip-hop.

Were there other songs during the summer of 2019? This one was a gift: a squeaky clean rap song you could belt along with your kids and your country-music-loving neighbor. It’s a reminder of how genre doesn’t matter and music can unite. Given our current predicament, it was a year ahead of schedule.