Against Nostalgia, or Why You Should Listen to New Music

I am friends on Facebook with many of my friends from high school. When we aren’t reminiscing, discussing our children, or arguing about the fate of our school mascot, we’re often talking about the pop culture that defined our teens. 

The deaths of the iconic musicians of our youth tend to inspire lots of nostalgia – the recent passings of Eddie Van Halen and Neil Peart led to much sharing of fond memories. My generation grew up on Van Halen and Rush (though I had little use for the latter), and it’s fun to let the old songs carry one back, if only for a moment.

Too many of these same friends, however, do not listen to new sounds.  They play the same classic rock of the ‘70s and ‘80s, as if their openness to novelty ceased around the time they became old enough to rent a car. When my friends post about contemporary music, it is to complain that it is unimaginative or vulgar.   In every generation, parents tend to be convinced that their children’s passions are missing something vital; if there is one universal truth about aging, it is that it encourages a false sense of cultural decline.   “Things are not as they were” is a lament that goes back to the Sumerians.

If there are two art forms to which I am devoted, they are poetry and country music.  I am neither a poet nor a musician, but I am an appreciative (and, I hope, a knowledgeable) consumer.  I have my favorites to which I return again and again; I doubt I will ever stop listening to Merle Haggard, or reading W.H. Auden.  But I balance that with a deep commitment to consuming the current as well.

I try to read at least one new poet a month.  On my Spotify feed, I get new country and Americana releases every week. I listen, put favorites on repeat for a few days, and then move on to what is newer still.  I return again and again to old comforts, but never at the expense of discovering the latest. 

This isn’t about spotting a trend before anyone else. This isn’t about demonstrating the subtlety of my taste by my fondness for artists of whom no one else has ever heard. It’s a silliness to believe that that which is obscure is invariably better. This is about preventing stagnation, and it is -- for a one-time professional historian who remains obsessed with his own past – about liberating myself from the burden of memory.

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” So said Faulkner, who knew a thing or 27 about ghosts.  Nostalgia, as the pedants will tell you, is a compound of the Greek words for “homecoming” and “pain.”  The longing for what was (or what we imagine was) can be terribly destructive on a societal level. At its worst, the essence of MAGA-ism, explicit in the Again at the end of the acronym, is the false nostalgia for a past that never really existed.   (Cancel culture is, at its essence, a desire to dismiss the past as irredeemable and bigoted; MAGA-ism at its core is a refusal to accept social and cultural progress.  The conflict between the Woke and the MAGAts is primarily a battle between two wildly oversimplified and politicized versions of the past.)

Nostalgia can also be terribly destructive on a personal level.  I am haunted by ghosts, unable to escape the memories of what I had and what I lost.  Medication helps, and therapy will help when I can finally see a therapist in person again.  (Zoom is a useless platform for real talk.)  In the meantime, one of the best forms of self-care I have is to commit myself to listening to what I have never heard before. 

This doesn’t have to mean only listening to music that has only just been written, though that is valuable. Sometimes, it can mean discovering older pieces that one had not known, or delighting in new interpretations of old recordings. For example, I grew up on Glenn Gould’s original 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations.  I have returned to it again and again throughout my life.  A few years ago, I discovered Igor Levit’s version – and realized I preferred it immensely.  It’s the same music, but performed differently; it allows me to both connect to what I have long loved without being transported back to what used to be.

I listen to Top 40 with my children. (Olivia Rodrigo is a favorite.)  I listen to brand-new country and Americana while I freelance, or write these newsletters.  I do this not to stay “hip,” but as part of the slow and steady discipline of liberating myself from the burden of defining my present by my past.

Too great a reliance on the “oldies” is too often a trailhead into despair about what is and what will be.  The past informs and it inspires, but I’ve found that it’s better for me when my visits there are fleeting.  The “new” isn’t just about novelty – it’s about hope.

New this month, and on repeat while I wrote this, is Jason Boland’s cover of Steve Winwood’s classic, Back in the High Life.

All the doors I closed one time will open up again
I'll be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched me once will smile and take me in