Musical nostalgia

[AllisonSays]

The backstory to this post is that this morning I had to send some emails for work. Like a dickhead, I was singing 'oh, sometimes, I send an email' to my girlfriend to the tune of that (Etta James?) sample that's in the Flo Rida song Good Feeling, which she didn't know because she's French and painfully ignorant of the detritus of popular culture that pretty much fills up my brain, so I looked it up on YouTube to play it for her.

She didn't like it but whatever. The point is that I scrolled down to the comments, absent-mindedly, to find this incredible outpouring of nostalgia for 2011. 2011! That is not long ago. The comments follow the format of the nostalgia-comments that you get on, like, '60s music so closely that I thought they might be a joke or consciously ironic, but I don't think they are - there are too many of them with too many upvotes.

For example: "When TikTok was just a song from Ke$ha, When Corona was just a beer, When there were no worries all you could do was have fun at school and at the playground. The time where we played our 3Ds, Wiis and DSis, and PlayStations and Xboxes. Where things were actually funny. I miss 2010-2015."

"Why there is no music like this anymore? All i hear in the radio are fcking tiktoks songs, so sad."

This is weird, right? I think that Simon Price or Mark Fisher talk somewhere about the kind of accelerated nostalgia of the internet generation, which I guess I'd always dismissed a wee bit of an old man shouts at cloud type of thing, but I am fairly surprised by the apparently sincere nostalgia of people for, like, Flo Rida.

[Glebe]

Fuck me I'm old. It's The likes of 'Wuthering Heights' that gets me all misty-eyed.

[shagatha crustie]

This is weird, right? I think that Simon Price or Mark Fisher talk somewhere about the kind of accelerated nostalgia of the internet generation, which I guess I'd always dismissed a wee bit of an old man shouts at cloud type of thing, but I am fairly surprised by the apparently sincere nostalgia of people for, like, Flo Rida.

Nah this is totally what it is I think. Culture moving so fast and the general sense of waste/loss with throwaway styles and phases, combined with unlimited access to past media, creates a kind of feedback loop where younger people are constantly nostalgicising. Not helped by Spotify now mining this in its brand strategy, rounding up what you listen to at the end of each year and gifting your user data back to you as emotional attachment.

[the]

There was what you might loosely call a discussion of this sort of thing semi-recently.

It doesn't really disturb me like it seems to with some people, it's just because that which is being reminisced over seems so flimsy and recent. I think people who think that THIS SHOULDN'T HAPPEN are wilfully denying that they too used to consider the past in their youth.

[earl_sleek]

I think also for people in the English-speaking world, 2016 was such a watershed with Trump / Brexit that pre-2016 does genuinely feel like a different era.

[ajsmith2]

Ultra short term nostalgia isn't just a feature of today's hyper fast mass media world I'd say: for instance, in 1969 Sha Na Na were already trading on fond memories of am idealised pre JFK assassination pre Beatles golden age that was similarly less than a decade old. In both cases I think part of the reason for such compressed nostalgia is newly politically aware and responsible 20 somethings pining for a recent time when life seemed (and because they were kids/teens living at home at the time actually was for them) less complicated: with the 60s lot it was the Vietnam/Nixon etc paradigm and nostalgia for the (seemingly) entirely positive vibes of Camelot: with the current crop there's definitely an analogous dollop of Obama-stalgia.

[the]

Yeah, although I think there's an important weight distinction between nostalgic discussion and actual revivals.

It's also worth considering that comments sections on websites are host to whimsical ponderous gas with little or no cost of meaning to the commenter.

[Brundle-Fly]

I'm nostalgic for the times before people said "Back in the day".

[The Mollusk]

I think that Simon Price or Mark Fisher talk somewhere about the kind of accelerated nostalgia of the internet generation

Doesn't surprise me at all to see Fisher/Price talking about culture for children.

SMASH THE LIKE WHO ELSE IS READING THIS IN 2020

[crankshaft]

I have a theory that it's not just being driven by tech and social media, but by end-stage capitalism. When you have no job security, no savings, no possibility of ever owning your own home, no safety net, fascism closing in on all sides and a totally atomised society, is it any wonder that young people are nostalgic for when they were ten years younger, when none of this was their problem?

[AllisonSays]

I guess it makes sense as a response to a chaotic present and uncertain or deferred future, some kind of anchoring in nostalgia, which connects back to the thing about the '60s. To be honest it is a banger as well, but I think it's been used on too many ads and football montages to solicit an emotional reaction from me.

[dissolute ocelot]

Recently I was looking at the YouTube comments for Sharon van Etten's "Seventeen", which comprise thousands of people saying how life was either vastly better or worse when they were 17, ranging in age from about 20 to 200. I'm sure it's not nostalgia specifically, just wishing you were elsewhere, at a happier time, younger (e.g. 17, when everything was shit but in a different way than today).

[The Mollusk]

feelin p sad listenin to this, like this comment if u rember a time when u were happy

0 LIKES

[A Hat Like That]

One of my go-to 'fix a bad day' articles remains this:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/8gvy7a/rave-video-comments-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

[Better Midlands]

e.g. 17, when everything was shit but in a different way than today

I guess I was lucky, my life was amazing when I was 17 (1989) - I'd go back in a flash.

[bgmnts]

Remember last week? People born in the past few days won't have any idea what last week was like.

[famethrowa]

I have a strange nostalgia for Northern Soul. It was before my time, I live on the other side of the world from where it happened, and I really haven't heard much of the famous songs... but for some reason I'm intrigued by it all. Fake nostalgia?

[bgmnts]

Notyourstalgia.

[Brundle-Fly]

I guess I was lucky, my life was amazing when I was 17 (1989) - I'd go back in a flash.

I wouldn't say AMAZING (for me I was 17 in 1983) but absolutely not shit,  yeah, I'll join you in that Tardis.

[Astronaut Omens]

An old man writes:
Can anyone throw some light onto what the youngster quoted in the OP said though?
Has TikTok changed pop music? Is there a distinct style of music associated with TikTok videos? What's changed?

[ProvanFan]

Anthony Shakir made better use of that Etta James song, back in the good olden days of yore gone by.

[ProvanFan]

Doi-oing too, for the grandads.

[Johnboy]

I was 17 in 1988 and I distinctly remember feeling nostalgia for the early 80s pop charts/Smash Hits etc.

[Jockice]

I wouldn't say AMAZING (for me I was 17 in 1983) but absolutely not shit,  yeah, I'll join you in that Tardis.

So was I. I've had much MUCH worse years.