In the age of perpetual streaming and digital downloads, the music format of “the single” helps both anchor years and speak to changing times.

Many of us can pinpoint the year of a song’s release based on our seasonal memories and lives at that time. But since the Juno Awards launched 50 years ago, iconic aspects of a single have also surely changed.

While you no longer need a clock radio to tune into Top 40 hits and you can’t buy a 45 in vinyl (as in my own youth), great songs continue to inspire cranking the speakers, hitting the dance floor (or one’s kitchen floor these pandemic days) and the release of being lifted higher.

Today in The Conversation Canada, a roster of authors reflect on select Juno award-winning hit singles of the year since 1976. Robbie MacKay of Queen’s University lent his pop history knowledge to writing the introduction, and a fascinating meditation on “Hot Child in the City” (1976), and experts in a range of fields each contributed: Armand Garnet Ruffo, Kip Pegley, Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw and Robert Morrison of Queen’s University, Tamar Faber of York University and Vershawn Ashanti Young of University of Waterloo.

These authors’ commentaries, from “Never Surrender,” (1985) to “Can’t Feel My Face” (2016), and beyond inspire us to listen and look again. They show the importance of art, story and being open to new insights when we consider our personal and collective lives.

Also today:

• New cross-Canada research highlights an early childhood educator recruitment crisis
• DNA analysis reveals the identity of a member of the doomed Franklin Arctic expedition
• Rights for nature: How granting a river ‘personhood’ could help protect it
• Pregnancy loss: Workplaces must recognize its physical and emotional toll
• When it comes to social networks, bigger isn’t always better
• AstraZeneca second dose: Should I get the same vaccine or choose Pfizer or Moderna?

All the best.