Yet another Guardian piece on retro culture attempts to explain why "why pop is so heavily plundering the past" - specifically the '90s.
Writer Shaad D'Souza notes the number of singles in the UK charts that reference "the dance music of the 90s and 00s" - Switch Disco and Ella Henderson’s React "samples Robert Miles’ trance classic Children', David Guetta’s Baby Don’t Hurt Me flips Haddaway’s immortal What Is Love, Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj’s Alone recycles the hook of Alice Deejay’s Better Off Alone, and Denham Audio has had a longstanding hit with a version of Strike’s U Sure Do. All of them hark back to an era of bright uncomplicated melodies, big melancholic chords, and messy nights out that went mercifully undocumented on social media."
He argues that "these tracks differ from the way rap music has long used samples: the majority feature a faithful recreation of a vocal hook or the original song’s production. Both options create an uncanny sense of time warp, a kind of musical deja vu. "
Quotes from Radio 1 deejay Natalie O’Leary who says that “in the 90s, the clubbing scene in the UK was a huge thing, and these trance tracks were part of British culture. They’re these feelgood songs that aren’t too deep"
Others argue that nostalgia for the monoculture is part of it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On Twitter, It's Her Factory blogger / professor / author of The Future of Rock and Roll Robin James retweets the Grauniad piece but notes that "this article fails to mention Simon Reynolds 20 year old book on musical Retromania"
That's nice of her, but then again, I suppose A/ as much as I'd like to, I don't own the subject B/ the book is actually only 12-years-old!
Which is revealing in its own way of how Time has become elasticated and mushified in these retro-recursive conditions. It feels like an eon ago since the book came out in 2011, yet also like only yesterday....
Always thought you should repackage 'Retromania' in a 'new' edition (with a few extra pages) and then go on a 10th anniversary tour in which you look back on 'Retromania' (the book) but also re-read parts of it in a live recreation of its original text.
ReplyDeleteA bit like bands doing one whole album as nostalgia 20/30 years later. Extra track and a tacky badge, and all that.
Asif
I have actually thought of doing a sort-of-sequel, a collection of related writings and further thoughts and responses to new developments.
ReplyDeleteBut a 'deluxe' expanded edition reissue would be better - conceptually apposite - perhaps with reenactments of the original book events including the original participants.