The Nostalgic Beat
Why Music From the Past is Still Relevant
After climbing to the nosebleeders and finding your seat. You look out, taking in a sea of people abuzz and enthusiastically waiting for the night’s festivities to begin. On your way into the arena you hear that the show is sold out and from a bird’s-eye view, you watch as every seat in the place is occupied by both young and old. The group of college-age concertgoers directly in front of you are debating which album from tonight’s main act is the most authentic and which ones are obviously selling-out records. After the opener bows and exited the stages, the arena goes black and a single spotlight focuses on the final act. Elton John, a music icon whose career spans decades, hits the first note and the crowd erupts in song.
Although Elton John’s current tour is advertised as being his last, the energy surrounding music from eras past has recently been especially conspicuous. From a tsunami of tracks making the rounds on social media to tv series and exhibitions dedicated to pop and rock icons’ multiple-decade careers, music from the last 50 years has never faded into the background. Instead, younger generations who weren’t even alive when this music was labelled as novel are falling in love with it as much as with the hottest new acts. “I think people who feel nostalgic for the 1970s and 80s but never lived in those decades are probably imagining an idealised version of the time, based on media representations,” explains Will Brooker, a professor at Kingston University in Film and Culture Studies,“it’s easier to feel that things were more innocent, less complicated and [freer] back then. It offers an escape from the difficulties of the present day.”
On Merriam-Webster Nostalgia is defined as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Data from GWI, an international company focusing on audience targeting, shows Millennials and Zoomers are the most nostalgic generations with 15% of zoomers and 14% of Millennials longing for the good old ways. This same data also highlights that Gen Zers and Y2K kids regularly use music as a form of escapism. According to The Harris Poll, an international market search institution, millennials and gen zer are the most prominent music listeners with 89% of US citizens ages 18 to 29 tuning into the beat daily. Across the pond, Pia Jones, a twenty-something music student at Oxford Brookes University, says she regularly has headphones on with most of what she’s listening to being from either 70s or 80s. “A part of it [listening to music] is because it’s just a habit now. I guess also being a musician I have a need to be surrounded by it [music] whether that’s playing it in my head, composing in my head or listening to it doesn’t matter but I just need it.”
The pining for the past is also echoed in media consumption and what’s currently in the limelight. In the last few years challenges and trends for songs and fashion styles from the 70s and 80s music icons have been taking TikTok by storm. The most publicized trend was surrounding the hype around Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)," after its inclusion in the Netflix Series Stranger Things. Initially released in 1985, “Running up That Hill…” the song went viral with over 2 million videos on TikTok and more than 81 thousand on Instagram using the track. It rocketed to the top of the UK singles charts in 2022. “I would say because a lot of songs that go viral on TikTok end reentering the charts, there's been a lot of 80s music that has reentered the charts,” states Emily Edwards and History and Journalism undergrad at the London university Goldsmith and a super fan of Billy Joel, “there was a Fleetwood Mac trend as well and then that song reentered the charts and was on the radio again. There definitely is an aspect of nostalgia and going viral.”
A Google search on nostalgia and trends brings up various marketing companies’ consumer reports encouraging companies to push their consumer products by using nostalgia. “I think movies, TV shows, games, clothes and music are regularly sold to us based on nostalgia,” explains Brooker, highlighting the recent attention put on the 1980s with such popular Netflix series as Stranger Things and “the music subgenres vaporwave and synthwave”.
“These artists were the soundtrack of my childhood and teen years,” says Pia Jones when asked about her experience recently attending both Elton John and Abba Voyage, “so getting to attend these concerts were the chance of a lifetime, especially Elton John.”