3 Signs You’re Nostalgia Listening Instead of Discovering New Music
· Vice
Feeling stuck in a maze of the same old music day after day? Is your queue full of songs that came out when you were in high school? Want to find new music but get discouraged by how much there is, so you just go back to the safety of the same three albums from 20 years ago? You might be nostalgia listening. But don’t you worry, we’re here to help recognize the signs.
Same Old Songs On Repeat
Nostalgia listening is just one of several explanations for having the same songs on repeat, but it’s one of the more plausible answers. If you’re catching yourself with the same high school playlist on repeat all day, take a moment to ask yourself why? Is it just a brief throwback moment after an old Fall Out Boy song came on shuffle? Or is that early-2000s emo-punk playlist being used as a crutch?
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There’s no reason to search for new music when Rise Against already has a perfect discography, right? Surely there’s no reason not to only listen to Paramore’s first three albums on repeat and nothing else for the rest of the year. That definitely won’t cause problems when hanging out with your friend who always asks what new stuff you’re listening to lately. And then you sheepishly have to admit it’s just been Bayside’s self-titled second album over and over for three months.
Is Music From High School Really That Much Better?
If you find yourself convinced that the music from your high school years was actually way better than music today, we have two words for you: nostalgia listening. This varies by person, depending on which years you were in high school, of course. But we often feel like the popular music of our youth is superior to today’s music. More specifically, this happens with music we discovered in our formative years. For example, what our parents listened to when we were kids, or the first bands we saw live as teenagers.
Nostalgia listening is deeply tied to memory, and music attached to good memories will always carry a romanticized rose-tint. Not to say that’s unhealthy, just that it happens. And it’ll be much easier to enjoy that music when we accept that not all of it was top-tier artistry. It also gets easier to protect that nostalgic-yet-subjectively-bad music from criticism. Because not everyone is going to get your obsession with Cobra Starship, for example. It’s all part of life, isn’t it? If you love something, you have to set it free. And sometimes that’s a 20-year fixation on ¡Viva la Cobra!.
General Malaise About Finding New Music
This might be the biggest sign you’re stuck in a nostalgia listening hole. If the prospect of finding new music puts you further into a funk, it’s time to put down the This Is Indie Sleaze playlist. We have an emergency on our hands, but don’t worry, there’s good news! It’s possible to detach from the life support of old music and experience a Matrix-esque rebirth into the current reality.
Unfortunately, like in The Matrix, the current new music landscape is a bit of a dystopia. AI slop, formulaic mainstream pop, misleading social media marketing campaigns, and diabolical streaming platforms have made new music less exciting. It’s easier than ever to discover new artists, but time spent with an album is fleeting. That lack of depth pushes us toward nostalgia listening more and more. At least albums made before 2015 are familiar and comforting.
But don’t you want to experience joy? Don’t you want to support a young indie band who’s just starting out, releasing their first singles on Bandcamp? Isn’t it nice to be on the ground floor of a new band? If anything, you can brag about how you knew them before they got big. That has to count for something.
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