Ford, Rubin and Giovanello examine familiarity not as a terminal state of recognition but as a variable shaping the quality of autobiographical retrieval. In an event-related fMRI study, younger and older participants retrieved memories in response to age-specific popular musical clips and rated song familiarity, temporal specificity and emotional valence. Greater familiarity was associated across participants with increased dorsomedial prefrontal activity, more temporally specific memories and greater positivity. Age modified the pattern: familiarity was more closely associated with enhanced memory detail in younger adults and with affective positivity in older adults. The study’s theoretical contribution is to connect subjective familiarity with the phenomenology and neural organisation of autobiographical remembering. Its methodological strength lies in combining cue ratings, memory characteristics and neuroimaging rather than treating retrieval as a binary outcome. The wider bridge joins music cognition to lifespan memory research, showing that the autobiographical effectiveness of a cue depends simultaneously on personal relevance and the changing architecture of remembering across age.