Nostalgia, the "melancholy sadness originated by the memory of lost happiness" dominates music tastes. In general, it dominates us at all levels. Any past time was better becoming truly universal when talking about certain groups or when on a personal level we choose to choose the best pieces of our youth to produce an impeccable story. The festivals determine to go to the old glories that still have a wide tour and base of followers. The media speak long and hard of discs of the past. Day-to-day conversations focus on distant issues and not on the present. Nostalgia, the yearning for yesterday, the melancholy of the past, controls us. Why?
Commodores
Pop music, in a journey defined by the constant search for its own roots and the youthful effervescence, has always sought itself in yesterday. From the arrival of Blues in the mid-twentieth century to the constant imitations of past genres of the 21st century, through Punk, Glam Rock or Grunge, talking about music implies talking about emotions that always find referents anchored in memory. Under this tendency, present at an artistic level, there is an irrepressible personal and emotional impulse: our natural tendency to sweeten music that we enjoy in the youth of each one, in adolescence. We formed there, and that is our “prison”.
How is this built in our brain? Various scientific studies have shown that listening to music releases various chemical reactions in our brain. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, substances that are also released when we try a food that we especially like, when we see a film that touches the sensitive fiber, when we go back to talking to an old friend from whom we do not know anything, etc. The process is common to all of us and there is nothing we can do to escape it. It is useless to resist: music is specifically created so that we add memories, feelings of the past and emotions to come. If we ripped it off, it would probably be useless.
The fun part, which links nostalgia and music, comes now: adolescence is the time when the release of these chemicals, in the face of external reactions or stimuli, is greater. Our hormonal growth between the ages of 12 and 21 is remarkably rapid in proportion to the other years of our life. In addition, our identity is forged from then on.
Adolescence is one of the most important moments of our lives because our identity is forged from then on. And music is almost always there, directly or indirectly. Growing up during adolescence involves many decisions, conscious or not, that will mold us when we are young and adult. Political affiliations, tastes, models of thought. It is true that many of these issues evaporate later in time, but so too do many others survive. It is one of the most important moments of our lives. And music is almost always there, directly or indirectly.
And what is the result? Our teenage songs are our Songs. Nostalgia, therefore, is not a mere cultural imposition or an industry trend, it undoubtedly sits deep in our brain, and from there it is impossible to resist it. That song first heard when you were meeting the one who would later be your boyfriend, or that first girl you met on a Mediterranean beach, barely fifteen years old, while talking about that group that you liked so much about young people, are the first steps in an autonomous life. These are very important moments.
Listening to those songs, groups or records is therefore transformed into a powerful hindsight exercise. For some you can literally get back there. Like the smell of the favorite dish that your mother always cooked on Sundays, the 10,000 Maniacs record that marked the first years of your adolescence now keeps you in a special corner of your memory. It is no longer what it was, true, but you will always defend it to death. Oh, that summer when parents took us all over the peninsular north, by car, with a compilation of the best songs of The Beatles. What time those, eh?
The phenomenon is universal. So much so, that there are those who have ventured to create The Nostalgia Machine, the machine of nostalgia that quickly and accurately brings you to the best hits of the year that you feel like. Did your first goal with the team of the institute mark you, say, in 1975, 1985 or 1995? Maybe watching the songs that were popular in 1975, 1985 or 1995 do feel like crying.
However, this theory, which puts adolescence in front of all subsequent life experience, fits in with this theory. Surely more than one you can identify a lot of songs after your teen years that you set fire to the present. In some cases, for example, the songs of late teen years weigh more than the adolescence itself.
The difference? It resides only in the emotional impact that each one may have suffered, younger or older. It seems clear, however, that there is a pattern among all of us: the songs of our youth, be it when it wants to be, impel a certain nostalgic drive, that walks between melancholy and the apology of the past, that no later song, present or future is capable of creating.
From a psychological point of view can also be explained. What we really miss, as some studies have shown, would not be a concrete fact, a day, an act, as we have enumerated above, and yes, a time, a feeling.
What we really miss, as some studies have shown, would not be a concrete fact, a day, an act, as enumerated above, and a time, a feeling. It may be that when we listen to a certain song we are not thinking about the February exams, or the second exam in September, and yes in the four or five years in which we moved between the pages of the University.
Or that we should not miss that stupid way of drinking with friends, and those days of apparent absolute freedom in which we still drank in parks. Feeling versus fact, from the concrete to the general. "The miracle of memory", or how we can remember a song that we have not heard in years and we are not able to think about what we had dinner two nights ago.
Perhaps here we can explain the boring tendency of the average Rock fan to denounce all music of the present and sweeten the past exaggeratedly, putting any group from this same year to Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones or The Police. Should we blame them for being slaves to their own emotions? Maybe not, but of course there are those who are making a profit out of it. How to understand but that The Kinks in the eighties, with some two decades of production behind them, seem like dinosaurs, and that U2 still continue to publish discs and filling stadiums, with great expectation of mainstream and public criticism, more than thirty years later of having formed as a group. The industry has been able to take advantage of the nostalgia of the generation that today can afford to pay tickets over sixty euros.
Nostalgia and music are terms that go hand in hand. From the psychological, the neurological, to the purely compositional. There are many genres that today live in a permanent state of melancholy for yesterday, transmitting their visions of the past to their young followers.
In the end, we can scarcely blame music groups when we ourselves fall, by tyranny of the brain, in the same defects. Music is a result of who we are and what we are, it seems, is a lot of chemicals affecting the different spaces of our head. In that, nostalgia has always moved the Pop music and we move. Perhaps, even being aware of all this, we cannot avoid, in a few years, to speak ill of the music of today and to praise all those groups that accompanied us in the difficult years that were from childhood to youth. We cannot really avoid it: we are, biologically, destined to do so.
References:
http://www.vancouversun.com/
https://www.history-of-rock.com/
http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/
http://www.cpsglobal.org/content/miracle-memory
https://www.youtube.com/
http://vevo.com/
http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/
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Thanks for sharing this great quality article with us all. Your title got me going right away, I could also easily challenge people to find out what kind of music I am into now. For that matter, I could challenge people to find out where I am from based on what I am listening to now! LOL!!!
Thanks a bunch for the opportunity to share and hear this music I used to hear, way back when... ;) Namaste
...what can I say .... thank you for the note sure appreciate it . ... I do like my songs form the late 70 into early 80 and so on the best ....
OH it's sooooooo true.... I pine for the sounds of the 90's like it was a different time in the world, and the early naughties tunes make me feel 15 again (which is only an attractive concept for the 3 minutes and 33 seconds the song lasts, because who actually wants to go through the hell that was adolescence again?).
is not that the music used to be better is only that the mainstream music its not good now , for example the beatle were a boys band, now imagine one direction doing what the beatle did
perhaps today's kids will be doing something that really makes them grow ...while at the same time some song is playing that one will stick with them ...
Muy buen post
Very good post
@indepthstory You aren' kidding. Every time I hear Sandstorm by Darude, I am transported back in time.
Still one of the best "lose yourself and dance like a crazy person" songs...
uuuufff it is too techno for me .... as mentioned this music does not takes me back to CRUCIAL moments of my youth ... LOLOL cheers
that's pretty interesting thanks a lot for sharing and keep on posting ;)
hey thank you cheers ..
It reminds on when we are still cool and bring back good memories
Way beyond Nostalgia & Melancholy, in my own opinion and without the most minimal shadow of doubt, the true reason that really triggers our preference to like much more the music from our adolescence years than the one playing these days.. IS.. ¡drumroll!
¡Live Experiences! ¡True Lively & Vivid Experiences!
Chemical and Exalted Hormonal Live Experiences so heavily intermixed, so well interwoven, so deeply sedimented and solidified, so damn well interconnected with old songs, tunes and sonorous stimuli from our tender youth & already so strong attached to what today our authentic, older and crystallized inner self eventually became as result of having survived them all unharmed through the early years. Is undoubtedly the right answer here. }:)
And as for your adolescence years. Haha, this not takes so much huff & puff a guessing to Know you've coming thru and survived the heavenly & stunning sixties. :p
a bit more .... mid to late 70's ... cheers ...
Amazing post! Keep up the Good work!
...will do many thanks for the note .... cheers ..
Even though I am a child of the 60s I have always managed to find new music to leave its mark on me. But then having music on is a huge part of my day.
Music is probably at it's most diverse state it has ever been in, not in the mainstream though. More new artists are using the interest to distribute their music and gain awareness, free from control buy the record industry.
This means we no longer have a more "common collective" memory of music for each generation, there is so much through so many channels that the huge bands of the past will get even more sparse than even now.
This is good though imho, there is always that next gem of an artist to find :)
Thanks for the great post. I agree and at the same time don't agree! I love music just like the next one. But as one of the comments below...music from the past is great it has soul and brings al kind of emotions out! But i also enjoy todays music very much! I live in Tanzania and the African bongo music is amazing. Nigerian music is currently copied all over. It makes my body move and makes me intensely happy! It is like a time out of all bullshit that is happening around you...Just you and the music! If you are interested i can recommend you some African sounds...Karibu!
저는 이런 분들 때문에 인생이 즐겁습니다 음악이 있었기에 우리네 삶이 즐겁다는 생각을 해봅니다
"I am happy because of these people. I have music and I think that our life is fun." ... agree with you 100% life is FUN really thanks and best of good luck ...
Hey, interesting topic! I think Nostalgia is one aspect of a bigger picture. More in general one could say that it has to do with our musical socialization. A general sound we have got used to hear and certain instruments, specific intervals and harmonies etc..
wavi
Brilliant post - thank you so much... that was very interesting as I too am a song writer I ponder these same issues often!
here again is the connection that some songs have to what I was doing at a specific point in time and for me those where the best years anyway ...
So i started writing a blog about music and the brain 3 days ago, saw this post earlier today and thought 'ahh balls', too late! I feel our posts come at it from a different enough angle though, phew!
Excellent blog though, if mine does a 10th as well, i'll be happy!
well what can I say good luck and best wishes...LOL
all right i think the music frome our young time its the best in our brain becaus the time when we are young its the best time in all our live :)
absolutely they say is when our brains are absorbing the most ...
the important time in our live :)
Great posts and songs. I find myself listening to rock and roll now more than ever. Thanks. 🐓🐓
for me hard to digest these new wave music .... some are ok, but still have no connection with what I do on daily life ...
Speaking for a lot of generation Ys. I am 29, and I hate the music I hear on the radio and these young artist. They have little talent but most importantly they have no message. Now, I do like rap an booty shaking music just as the next person but I want to be motivated to live another day. Talk about social issues, political issues something other than money and how's. I listen to the 90s music and gospel that I grew up listening. I am glad I am not growing up with this new age music because they have no standards. A lot of those kids don't even respect their elders that came before them and opened the door for them to even speak in front of a crowd.
perhaps technology is making it shorter for ideas to get out there .... past years songwriters use to spend days if not months figuring out a tune ... today you play electronics and within the hour you are leading a concert ...
No. That has nothing to do with content and having something important to say
Excelente artículo y con un tema fascinante. Soy de esa época en que la música lograba cambios significativos y revolucionarios que apasionaron a las generaciones de los 60, 70 . Recuerdo la pasión que ponía al oír esa música interpretada por todos y todas esos interpretes que menciona; pero no solo era oír, sino bailarla era como una droga que invadía mi humanidad. A estas alturas de mi vida, he bailado y oído mucha música, pero la felicidad que proporcionó la que oí y baile en mi adolescencia es incomparable con cualquier otra. Estoy totalmente de acuerdo con usted, ya que lo explica tan bien, y con argumentos científicos, que podemos decir, bueno. Excelente.
muchas gracias ... para mi es la conexion entre esa musica y lo que hacia en esos momentos .... aun cuando escucho ciertas canciones me recuerdan cosas que pense habia olvidado ...
Very good work. I was born in the ´61, so I am contemporary with you since the ´70 and I love that old music. Bee Gees, Abba, Barry Manillow and so many other fantastic singers. The psychology is very true because when we hear that music, all those memories of youth come out in our feelings. My kids also listen to a lot of that music and they like it, but they also like the new ones and those will be their music of memory. I´ll give you a upvote for that.
absolutely we are exactly from same year 1961 march by the way ..... cheers ...
The 80's music. Love those era!
yeap right ...late 70's music ...... loved it ...
Nice!! blog post I followed.
hey txs good writings for yourself ... cheers
our most memorable times were when we were young
Thank you for sharing this with me, even on my mediocre intro. This is a clever topic, that I'm sure we all think about. Very original.