Popular Music and Retro Culture in the Digital Era

Jean Hogarty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317196716
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the trend of retro and nostalgia within contemporary popular music culture. Using empirical evidence obtained from a case study of fans' engagement with older music, the book argues that retro culture is the result of an inseparable mix of cultural and technological changes, namely, the rise of a new generation and cultural mood along with the encouragement of new technologies. Retro culture has become a hot topic in recent years but this is the first time the subject has been explored from an academic perspective and from the fans' perspective. As such, this book promises to provide concrete answers about why retro culture dominates in contemporary society.

For the first time ever, this book provides an empirically grounded theory of popular music, retro culture and its intergenerational audience in the twenty-first century. It will appeal to advanced students of popular music studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology and music.

1
There Is No Now

Welcome to the Age of Retro Culture

“It doesn’t feel as if the 21st century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century,” laments Mark Fisher (2014), and he has a point: it’s the second decade of the twenty-first century, and Roger Waters is rebuilding his Wall, and The Who are talking about their (re)generation, and Mick Jagger and company still can’t get no satisfaction. And it’s not just the aging rockers of the twentieth century who engage in nostalgia events, but also boy bands such as Take That and rap groups such as N.W.A., who in 2015 released their biopic Straight Outta Compton. “Straight outta original ideas,” mocked the memes (Griggs 2015), and who could disagree? The spate of retrospective events serves as just one example of how the culture of retro and nostalgia holds sway over popular music in recent years; the preoccupation with the past is evinced more broadly in the trend of anniversary edition albums, the vinyl revival, the resurrection of dead pop stars in the form of holograms, and the presence of young artists mimicking old styles of music, with Imelda May invoking the 1950s rockabilly style and sound, and Bruno Mars and The Hooligans hark back to the 1970s heyday of Earth, Wind, and Fire. This book explores and explains why this trend of retro culture is so pervasive and popular in the twenty-first century.

Quite remarkably, the retro phenomenon has yet to be explored from an academic perspective; there is a complete absence of a sustained argument on the ubiquity of retro and nostalgia within contemporary popular music culture. At the present time, Simon Reynolds’ book Retromania(2011) and Mark Fisher’s book Ghosts of My Life(2014) represent perhaps the closest anyone has come to addressing related issues. In their journalistic texts, Reynolds and Fisher both examine the apparent obsession with older popular cultures by contemporary artists. However, there are a number of key differences between their texts and this text: my book represents the first concerted theoretical and empirical academic study on the topic. Furthermore, my text examines the issues of retro and nostalgia culture from the point of view of popular music fans and focuses exclusively on popular music rather than popular culture. This book thus promises to make a truly original contribution to the field of popular music studies dealing with a topic that has surprisingly never been covered before. In doing so, I hope that what follows will be informative and appealing, especially to those readers who may be studying or teaching subjects such as music, cultural studies, and sociology—subjects in which there has been considerable interest in retro culture, but no text which offers reliable evidence and argument about its significance.

The academic perspective employed in this book essentially involves testing the retro culture hypothesis empirically using evidence obtained from forty interviews. The layout is thus: Chapters 2 and 3 outline the theoretical framework, which is composed of a panoply of approaches – namely, David Hesmondhalgh’s (2005) “none of the above” thesis, Karl Mannheim’s (1928) concept of the “generation unit,” Raymond Williams’ (1961) “structures of feeling,” Jacques Derrida’s (1994) concept of “hauntology,” and Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) “technological determinism.” Chapters 4, 5, and 6 then test this framework empirically, and Chapter 7 concludes the book.

Chapter 2 begins by explaining how popular music was historically connected to youth culture, with each new wave of popular music from the mid- to late twentieth century serving to crystallize the emergence of new generational subcultures and structures of feeling. To explain this, I chart a brief genealogy of subcultural and postsubcultural theory because historically, they have dominated the sociology of popular music and generations. The subcultural studies reviewed in Chapter 2 include classic works by Paul Willis (1978), Dick Hebdige (1979), and Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (2006 [1976]) to name but a few, and the postsubcultural studies include those by Andy Bennett (1999) and David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl (2003).

The commonality between the aforementioned studies is that they all highlighted that popular music in the twentieth century frequently addressed contemporaneous sociopolitical issues and therefore served to soundtrack the zeitgeist of their relevant time period. For instance, rock’n’roll would be an example of a structure of feeling that emerged in association with a particular youth culture, whereas acid house and rave emerged at a much later date in tandem with a different generation. This contrasts, however, with the popular music scene of today in which retro culture is widespread (Reynolds 2011; Fisher 2014). There is now arguably a lack of original zeitgeist-defining music to soundtrack our present social, cultural, political, and economic woes (Fisher 2011). Rather, the sociopolitical inertia of the post–cold war/post-1980s era has seemingly been paralleled by a lull in creativity in popular music. As a result, there is arguably no genuinely new youth subcultural style associated with popular music today—or at least not on the scale of previous trends. As Reynolds (2011: 408) states, even the once futuristic genre of dance has stalled, and rap has been stuck “on a treadmill of bling and booty” since the early 2000s. Yes, it is true that grime and dubstep provided some originality in the 2000s, but both are far from new as we advance through the 2010s, and both were arguably quite limited in terms of mass appeal when compared to their predecessors in the twentieth century.

So where are we now? My view is that we are in the age of retro culture that is occupied by the ghosts of popular music’s past. As a result, the older subcultural and postsubcultural theories that focus on youth are no longer the most adequate theories for understanding popular music because popular music is simply not solely about youth anymore. Rather, it is an old cultural form that at least three generations have grown up with. Taking my cue from Hesmondhalgh’s (2005) “none of the above” article—which rejects subcultural and postsubcultural theories and calls for us to address instead the intergenerational composition of popular music’s audience today—I propose Mannheim’s concept of the “generation unit” as a useful starting point. The generation unit is basically a subset within an overall generation—that is to say it indicates a group that shares tastes (such as taste for older popular music), attitudes, and dispositions based on their common sociohistorical location. I argue, then, that retro culture has been facilitated partly by the rise of a new generation unit of retro fans with borrowed nostalgia for unlived eras.

Chapter 3 explains what “retro culture” actually is and what it is composed of; I do this by conceptualizing it as a structure of feeling—the “hauntological” structure of feeling to be exact—which is defined by a paradoxical harking back to a more futuristic past. It is an expression of the belief that the music of the mid- to late twentieth century is more authentic and futuristic than the music of the present. In this chapter I put forward the hypothesis that this structure of feeling is facilitated symbiotically not just by the emergence of the new generation unit discussed in Chapter 2, but also by the “temporal split” (Fisher 2014) of the 1980s, which gave birth to this generation unit and, finally, the convergence of new and old technologies, which gives access to older music.

Key to Chapter 3 is the exploration of the time and place that produced the generation unit of millennials discussed in Chapter 2. The time and place that produced them is simply post-1980s Western society. The 1980s in particular emerges as a recurring motif that is latticed throughout the book. The reason it is so important is because it is a “critical historical conjuncture,” as I call it, or a “temporal split,” as Fisher (2014) calls it, representing what he terms the beginning of the slow “cancellation of the future”; it is Fisher’s belief and mine that music used to be more forward looking and futuristic but that the neoliberalist policies pursued in the West since the 1980s have had a detrimental impact on the popular musical landscape of today. Simply put, neoliberalist policies have caused the decline of the welfare state, the rise of the cost of living, and the increasing casualization of labor, and this, in turn, has meant that there is less time, money, and energy available for experimentation in popular music by a new generation of artists born in post-1980s Western society. The argument is that these policies have led to bland and unoriginal music produced by an increasingly homogenous group, principally middle-class artists, as they are becoming the only social group who can still afford to indulge their interests and pursue their dreams. Thus, the increasing homogeneity of the creators leads to the homogeneity of the output. I argue that this lack of originality feeds into the hauntological structure of feeling—it breeds nostalgia for the more futuristic past when popular music was supposedly more youthful, original, heterogeneous, and forward looking.

This longing is felt by a generation unit of millennials born after the temporal split of the 1980s into a world increasingly haunted by the ghosts of popular music’s past with all those old artists and bands now available at their fingertips and in their parents’ vinyl collections. This latter point about new and old technologies facilitating and even encouraging interest in older music is where technological determinism comes in; technological determinism is a theory that I wanted to test in the empirical chapters, along with the notion of there being a generation unit with borrowed nostalgia for time periods they never lived through.

The research questions tested and explored, then, are roughly: To what extent is the medium the message? In other words, to what extent do new and old technologies facilitate the popularity of older music and styles? To what extent are harmonious intergenerational relationships between parents and children and the temporal split of the 1980s responsible for retromania? Why are we so haunted by popular music(s) past? Are the kids really alright? Why haven’t they swept away the old establishment?

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 answer these questions using the rich evidence gathered from interviews conducted with a cross-generational sample of male and female fans of older popular music aged between eighteen to sixty-two years of age and based in the greater Dublin area of Ireland. The results of this case study show that young people (as well as their elders) are haunted by popular music(s) past. It is found that the popular music of the mid- to late twentieth century is revered and remembered vicariously by young music fans in particular, for whom it connotes a golden age symbolic of all things youthful, authentic, and futuristic. It is thus argued that these young fans listen to and possess memories of and nostalgia for older music in their quest for authenticity and the desire to connect through music to a generation and time period that is not theirs. I contend that this is the result of a synthesis of cultural and technological changes.

“Cultural changes” relates to the spawning of a new generation unit that enjoys democratized parent–child relationships. This is discussed in Chapter 4, which finds that the older fans reported listening to the contemporaneous music of their youth when they were growing up and reminisced about the generational conflict this caused with their parents. By contrast, the younger fans born post-1980 enjoyed more democratized relationships with their parents and were in turn more likely to share their parents’ tastes, memories, and nostalgia for older music. However, because the younger fans were listening to music produced before they were born, the memories and nostalgia conjured up by this music was not for their own youth, but for time periods they never actually lived through. Simply put, they did not appear to possess their own unique generational culture or structure of feeling. Rather, their generational structure of feeling was formed through popular music produced before they were born.

Chapter 5 picks up on this point that there was a generational structure of feeling associated with the music of previous eras from rock’n’roll, through punk, and on to rave and argues that the structure of feeling experienced by the younger retro fans in this case study is hauntological. This is exhibited in their comments about how fantastic the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s they never lived through were. This new structure of feeling is partly the result of the intergenerational sharing of popular music taste, memory, and nostalgia, as discussed in Chapter 4, but also due to the influence of technologies, as discussed in Chapter 6.

Chapter 6 deals with the determinism of the “technological changes,” which are of equal portent in terms of creating retro culture. In this chapter, technology is shown to be a key player in pushing the hauntological narrative of a more futuristic past; in other words, “technological changes” refers both to the resurgence of interest in old formats such as vinyl and the rise of the Internet, which facilitates access to and encourages interest in older music. Instant access to older music on the Internet is partly what stimulates the young fans’ interest in it. Having said that, they preferred to eventually purchase their favorite music on older formats such as CDs and vinyl, as these were perceived as being more “authentic” because they functioned as symbolic reminders of the revered mid- to late twentieth century.

In general, the young generation unit of retro fans developed a constructed sense of “authenticity,” which emerges from the hauntological structure of feeling and the belief that the unlived past was a better place. In order to attain this sense of “authenticity,” they assimilated an impressive knowledge and memory of the history of popular music, exhibited vicarious nostalgia, regularly attended reunion gigs, and purchased material formats. In short, the findings discussed in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 show that cultural and technological trends enmesh to influence the trend toward retro culture within popular music today.

Finally, Chapter 7 deals with issues concerning the generalizability of the findings while also summarizing answers as to why retro culture is happening, using for the first time ever empirical answers provided by a sample of music fans. Ultimately, the forty fans (twenty-six aged between eighteen to thirty years of age and fourteen aged between forty-two and sixty-two years of age) featured in this case study constitute a specific sample of people. They were recruited through two means: an informational post placed on a social media forum of a tertiary-level institution in the greater Dublin area of Ireland with the permission of the forum moderator in September 2011, and through brief informational announcements prior to a number of randomly selected tutorials at the tertiary-level institution with the permission of the relevant head of department, module lecturer, and tutors from February 2012 to April 2012. In the summer of 2015 I followed up two of the interviews that had failed to come to fruition in 2012. It was emphasized in the calls that fans could be any age, as I wished to carry out a cross-generational comparison and that they must possess an “active interest in popular music.” The sample developed from this site was thus purposive in relation both to age (various age groups to enable comparison) and the possession of an “active interest in music” (meaning fans). My selection of fans was led partly by practical considerations, that is to say that using a third-level institution as a target site was an efficient way of gaining access to a large number of prospective interviewees.

The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 There Is No Now: Welcome to the Age of Retro Culture
• 2 Popular Music, Youth and Aging
• 3 Retro Culture in the Digital Era
• 4 Generation Units of Retro Fans
• 5 The Hauntological Structure of Feeling
• 6 Technological Determinism and Retro Culture
• 7 Back to the Future
• Index