millenial nostalgia songs (aren't what they used to be) *NO PHONE ALERT*

Wait, was there a retro craze for that stuff in the early 90s? I thought everyone (sensibly) hated it then.

Speaking of haircut new wave nostalgia, a brief tangent here: it now seems weird to me that the film The Wedding Singer was set only 13 years before the film was actually released, but is dripping in 80s iconography and nostalgia, and almost every joke in it is HEY THE 80S WERE A WEIRD TIME. Would it be as easy to be visually and audibly convincing that IT'S 2005 in a film made today?

The excesses of the mid-80s were already well profiled and caricatured (shoulder pads, big production, overly garish colours) by the mid-90s in a “the past was a different country” sense in a way that hasn’t been anywhere near as pronounced since; the gaps in culture beyond technological changes were incredibly vivid in the space of a decade

I remember, as a high school freshman in 1990, overhearing one of the cool, preppy senior guys saying to a friend in class -- "We're beginning to look back at the '80s and go... 'Ugh'."

I also remember a segment on the news, in 1989(?), where members of the Blue Man Group were ceremoniously burning artifacts from the '80s... e.g., a poster of "thirtysomething" -- the Blue Man goes, "I hear this is a good show, but let's burn it anyway."

There was something about the '80s that inspired that immediate reaction, even as the decade was still drawing to a close.

80s>90s
Carry on

xp yeah what was it? Reagan?

I guess the "Big '80s" signifiers (even in fashion, etc.) just quickly came to feel like "excesses"... maybe simply because it was a decade of "excess" (as opposed to the '70s or '90s, when style was meant to be more "authentic," "close to the ground," etc.)? IDK...

There was definitely a reaction against '70s style in the mid/late-'80s -- like the way kids in middle school would peg & roll their jeans, so they wouldn't look like "bell bottoms" -- but I don't if that reaction came as immediately (in the early '80s) as the corresponding rejection of '80s style did, in the early '90s.

(I remember thinking "I'm getting tired of the Nineties" at a college house party in '96 or '97, looking at dudes with goatees listening to Beck or whatever... I should have savored the moment, tho)

I think the question posed upthread about aughts nostalgia is really interesting. how would you portray 2005? I can't think of anything beyond flip phones, CDs, and references to the war/Bush & Katrina? eh? what else??

Emo

Guy in Von Dutch hat plugging iPod into dashboard of his Hummer

I think the question posed upthread about aughts nostalgia is really interesting. how would you portray 2005? I can't think of anything beyond flip phones, CDs, and references to the war/Bush & Katrina? eh? what else??

― flappy bird, Tuesday, November 20, 2018 2:42 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bojack horseman did a pretty fun take on 2007--intentionally obvious and over-the-top, but still: https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2016/08/03/03-home-loans-bojack.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.2x.jpg

Dragostea Din Tei

feel like it's pretty easy to have some catch-all signifiers. similar feeling of a culture of excess mentioned above that makes things creatively "date" quicker i guess?

myspace, dance punk, ed hardy tshirts, animal collective, blogging, american apparel, shutter shades, pitchfork, vector graphic ornamentation, emo/scene, nu rave, kanye west, tight jeans, cardigans, that specific variant of vice magazine hipster culture, keffiyeh scarves, polo shirts, terry richardson, freak folk, v-neck tshirts, oversized thick-framed glasses, blingee/style dollz, those rubber bracelets, wolf eyes/black dice/lightning bolt/animal collective, wings haircut, ironic neon, "landfill indie" q magazine music, megaupload/rapidshare/music blog culture, arms-akimbo selfies, "whale tail"

pretty obvious and throwing everything together there... but works in the way that "the 80s" or any other decade becomes a kind of separate un-nuanced caricature of itself.

Kanye and tight jeans are still here tho.

people were still hippies in 1977 too

feel like wearing men wearing skinny jeans now is getting equivalent to your dad having long hair and a handlebar mustache in the early 80s. there's probably critical mass of culture that, once it loses a certain amount of cache, you can't be a mindless adherent to it.

you can't be a liam gallagher lager mod in 2018, but you could in the late 90s and early 00s without even necessarily feeling like you're subscribing to it. you're just subconsciously picking it up from the world around you. unless you're more deeply into this stuff, that's your palette of influences to mold yourself into. whereas to do that now, you'd have to be making a conscious decision to do it.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GvO7eSx-RvQ/TRtcLg9L4lI/AAAAAAAAB9A/eZm4bhBExUg/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/James4.jpg

I like both of these artists but this is ill-conceived
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfPuIOKVzBw

Wait, was there a retro craze for that stuff in the early 90s? I thought everyone (sensibly) hated it then.

My college roommates and I threw a "Back to the '80s" party *in 1990*. There was definitely a sense of "ha ha it's a bit early for this nostalgia isn't it" but we were not the only ones and within two years it was completely mainstream.

The "Totally '80s" comp comes out in 1993:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-razor-tie-80s-compilation-awesome-forever-totally-80s-track-by-track-thread.126602/

Yeah, and the Just Can't Get Enough series began around the same time. Mid-'90s was a big time for CD comps like that.

The early 80s seem like a long long time ago in 1993

maybe just me

It wasn't even EARLY 80s! "Walk LIke an Egyptian" was 1986. "Take On Me" was 1985. People were nostalgically and semi-ironically rocking out to songs that were 6 or 7 years old.

I feel like ppl were semi-ironically rocking out to those songs even when they were current! Something about '80s culture maybe had that "double register" inherent in it...

I mean you can't really go "haha remember 2005, Kanye, Macbooks and tight jeans how dumb were we" when Kanye is still everywhere and half the people around you are still wearing tight jeans and own a Macbook. Some things are popular for too long to define one year.

I remember "classic italo disco trax" compilations (with only the obvious hits) in the shops around 1991, five years after the fact, even though the full-blown Italo revival didn't come until 2000-ish.

The early 80s seem like a long long time ago in 1993

i felt the same at the time... i remember when denim's "i'm against the 80s" came out in 1992 and there was the sense that the 80s was a far away place.

I guess the question is, what from 2010 is already gone now? The Bangles were huge in 1988 but were already broken up by 1990.

I feel like ppl were semi-ironically rocking out to those songs even when they were current! Something about '80s culture maybe had that "double register" inherent in it...

― my guitar friend wants his money (morrisp), Tuesday, November 20, 2018 3:47 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I think certain things you sort of know they are going to be seen as ridiculous at the time...like Kid Rock in the late 90s or Tekashi69 now

I guess the question is, what from 2010 is already gone now?
LMFAO?

Dr Luke?

dance-pop (four on the floor stuff specifically), chillwave, blog buzz, dubstep, indie folk revival?

apocalypse pop, enrique iglesias?

I sometimes forget Enrique Iglesias was still making hits in 2010.

See also, Nellly.

James Blunt, Black Eyed Peas, Ke$ha, Robbie Williams, Blackberry phones, Uggs.

Uggs.

FP'd you for racism.

linee that's a good list and i like that you said animal collective twice

MTV between 1992-1994 definitely pushed an anti-'80s agenda and even seemed anti-Michael Jackson at one point (around the time of "Earth Song" and the Jarvis Cocker incident which no one in the US actually got to see until Youtube).

I didn't know this until recently, but I guess a similar thing happened in the early '80s when every radio station that used to play hits from the BeeGees essentially banned their music for a few years.

I always got the sense that traditional rock and roll wasn't on the radio nearly as much throughout the second half of the '60s. Maybe the people who booked Sha Na Na at Woodstock were onto something.

I think it's easier to capitalize on nostalgia in the years after moments like this -- an extended period when a particular aesthetic unexpectedly vanishes.

Disco seemed cool again by the early '90s, and it seemed safer to flaunt '80s love after Romy & Michelle and The Wedding Singer which I believe was 1997-1998. I know there were several popular new wave comps during the early '90s, but it never really seemed mainstream to me.

new wave seemed verboten to a lot of Gen X bands - Cobain and Corgan recording Devo and Missing persons covers and having to justify it, Hole covering "The Killing Moon" and Malkmus walking up to Love afterward "you're so brave for that."

Lol I wonder if that influenced Pavement's "Killing Moon" cover.

I didn't know this until recently, but I guess a similar thing happened in the early '80s when every radio station that used to play hits from the BeeGees essentially banned their music for a few years.

This started in 1979, around the time Spirits Having Flown was released. The Saturday Night Fever Songs were still on the radio constantly through 1978, then a new Bee Gees album came out, its songs were ubiquitous, and so some stations advertised "no Bee Gees!" weekends. This also roughly coincided with the racist and homophobic Disco Demolition in Chicago.

"Dynamic Calories" was a great new wave tribute by Malkmus

bojack horseman did a pretty fun take on 2007--intentionally obvious and over-the-top, but still: https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2016/08/03/03-home-loans-bojack.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.2x.jpg
― twin sinema (voodoo chili), Tuesday, November 20, 2018 12:04 PM

Now with sassy butt phrases!

Perhaps worth mentioning that the Bee Gees blacklist of the early '80s failed to keep out a number of records that were pretty much Bee Gees incognito, such as Streisand's "Woman in Love," Dionne Warwick's "Hearbreaker," and Kenny & Dolly's "Islands in the Stream"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/arts/music/indie-rock-walking-tour-manhattan.html

new wave seemed verboten to a lot of Gen X bands - Cobain and Corgan recording Devo and Missing persons covers and having to justify it

eh I dunno this came out in 1992
https://img.discogs.com/yqGnrfXl_ioW583NV0KZYvxWIsY=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-839350-1273804434.jpeg.jpg

also fwiw I used to go to an 80s club night mostly playing early-mid 80s new wave quite often from '94 on and apparently the night started in '91/92, so 80s retro was happening as soon as the 80s finished, at least in provincial England.

Yeah I don’t remember there ever really being a “backlash” against ‘80s hits / New Wave.

(Notwithstanding what I said above, about ppl being all, “Eww, the Eighties,” even as they were still ending... that didn’t really apply to music.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOV5WXISM24

Y'all remember this one?

Gotta say, Calvin Harris' huge dork -> EDM heart-throb transition is inspiring.

I hate hate hate that Eliza Doolittle song posted way upthread - nobody is nostalgic for cassettes inherently but the music that was on them and it's weird to pretend that the medium is the part you think of fondly

like I wish I hadn't thrown away all the cassettes I had when I was six years old of all the songs I taped off the radio but that's because I think they would be interesting snapshots of my taste then, if I want to listen to music from 1994 I can just... listen to music from 1994

it's weird to me that people use "Baby One More Time" as a signifier of the 90s because it wasn't released in the UK til Feb 99 and that seems particularly late for a song to define a decade. But in a personal perspective it doesn't help that I started high school in 99 so I think of primary school as the 90s and secondary/uni as the noughties

I think of the early ‘90s (1990-‘93), mid ‘90s (‘94-‘97), and late ‘90s (‘98-‘99) as very discrete chunks, music-wise.

(Or maybe early/mid are kinda fluid, but late ‘90s definitely their own thing.)

"2002" is a banger.

it wasn't released in the UK til Feb 99 and that seems particularly late for a song to define a decade

i think it's common for songs/culture from 1959, 1969 & 1979 to define or symbolize their respective decades in retro media. and i get what you mean because i actually got to live through 1999 and consume its culture firsthand whereas i did not with those 3 other years.

for whatever reason i definitely think of 1999-2001 as its own separate block of pop culture that does not feel aligned with the '90s or the '00s.

I agree with that - 99-01 in Britain at least definitely feels like its own unique era. Not least because its the garage era and for years that's been the equivalent of the heyday of disco, the bit that producers reach back into when they want a handy dose of nostalgia. It's been happening for years and is probably on the way out now.

More generally there's a song on the new Little Mix album that quotes from Livin La Vida Loca, the Thong Song and Mis-Teeq's Scandalous. It's shamelessness is offset by the fact that it works.

I'd never heard that Smashing Pumpkins cover of "Destination Unknown," it's awful

there's probably a proper thread for the transition period or interzone of the late 90s and early 00s, which i associate mainly with saturated, sunny, big-budget videos in pop, hip-hop, and rock alike - and yet also with the nu-metal peak and all its visual and sonic angst. lot of stars whose careers or cultural impact didn't really get escape velocity from that era. whether you wind it up with 9/11 or the iraq war as non-musical landmarks seems to be an open question.

this thread is where i first bumped into this notion (framed as a "mini-decade"): The song that represents the END of the 90s as silly as "decade" stuff is, i think if you're gonna play that game you do need this mini-decade cause otherwise neither the "90s" or the "00s" add up to a coherent and unitary whole.