Features The Unstoppable Rise Of Nostalgia

Consider two of the most successful acts of the past year; both Adele and Lana Del Rey are artists for whom nostalgia is central, and it is not just these singers embracing all things retro. A sepia toned tint has been permeating ever further into pop culture over recent times, and this year has already seen some notable instances of artists appropriating nostalgic sounds.

It was music writer Simon Reynolds who coined the phrase ‘Retromania’ in his much quoted book from last year. Reynolds described a pop culture that was ‘obsessed with its own past,’ and that obsession appears to grow with every passing year. Lana Del Rey’s carefully crafted and refined retro sound, her cleverly cultivated image, and her early YouTube videos stacked with 1950’s pop culture references in thrall to the glory days of Hollywood, have seen her enjoy incredibly quick mainstream success. She is the perfect embodiment of “Retromania” and all the romanticism that goes with it. Del Rey has shown that there is a clear market for artists who embrace what’s gone before.

In the wake of Del Rey’s success came another hugely successful artist with an inescapably reminiscent sound. Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ has just spent four non-consecutive weeks at No.1, and is the biggest selling single of the year so far, with around 600,000 copies sold. The most striking thing about this track is its inescapable similarity to Sting & The Police, and its general air of 80’s smoothed out pop. A track like ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ is born out of nostalgia’s ability to take previously derided and unloved sounds and retrospectively reinvent and appropriate them, a theme that has previously been seen in artist like Washed Out referencing the 80s.

The new single from Gossip is yet another example. ‘Perfect World’ is a prime piece electro pop with a striking soul diva vocal from Beth Ditto. Fortunately, the song is excellent but there is no doubt that it is a track that could have come straight from the late 1980s.

Nostalgia is hard to escape from. Despite the masses of new excellent music to listen to, I always seem to come back to what I enjoyed growing up, which, more often than not, involves sticking on something like the unloved bonkers prog pop opus of Mansun’s ‘Six’ album - incidentally, a record ripe for nostalgic re-evaluation. It’s telling that the last real explosion of a real new crossover pop sound was the rise of dubstep and grime in the early noughties. Any truly new sounds in 2012 seem to be marginalised. There’s a massive amount of interesting and creative electronic music being made; for example, the maximalist dance sound of Rustie and the progressive warped hip-hop and electronica from producers like Hudson Mohawke, Machinedrum and Clams Casino. Electronic music as ever is a hub for progressive sounds but despite massive critical acclaim, Rustie’s ‘Glass Swords’ album has only sold around 3,000 copies. It is incredibly hard for progressive music to break through the nostalgia curtain.

Of course, reminiscing can be a force for good and can aid creation of excellent music, for example, the hybrid of retro guitar sounds of The Horrors’ last two albums. Nevertheless, you can’t help but worry about the danger of rampant nostalgia terminally stymieing creativity.

This summer will see perhaps the ultimate example of retromania going too far. The reunion concert in Hyde Park to celebrate the work of the 80s pop hit factory helmed by Stock, Atiken and Waterman sees Bananarama, Jason Donavan, Steps, Rick Astley and others coming together to celebrate the work of a record label that has been frequently derided and ridiculed over the years. Yet it is an almost guaranteed sell out. Perhaps this is the nostalgia resurgence’s nadir. Surely, the well of retro recycling and pastiche will soon run dry. In the meantime, it appears that the appetite for nostalgia is stronger than ever.