![[Column] Why has nostalgia become a major emotion in music?](/../assets/images/column-why-nostalgia-became-the-sound-of-the-internet.webp)
Why has the Internet amplified “nostalgia”?
Text: mmr｜Theme: Why does music in the digital age evoke nostalgia for the past?—Musical history of the Internet and nostalgia culture
Nostalgia as an emotion in the digital age
In the 21st century, one emotion has rapidly spread in the world of music. That is nostalgia.
Nostalgia used to be a feeling deeply tied to personal memories. Childhood memories, songs from your youth, time with your family. It was the feeling that arose when such a personal experience was connected to a specific piece of music.
However, the advent of the Internet has fundamentally changed this emotional structure.
YouTube, blogs, social media, and streaming. With music from all eras now accessible at the same time, music has come to be consumed as an ““archive of time” rather than the ““present”.
1970s disco, 1980s synth pop, 1990s R&B, 2000s indie rock. All of them line up on the same timeline.
In this situation, music is experienced not as something new, but as layers of time. And the emotion that crossed all these layers was nostalgia.
The Internet is not only the world”s largest music library, but also the world”s largest storage device.
When the Internet transformed music from a “culture of the present” to a “culture of time,” nostalgia became its central emotion.
Nostalgia is not a new emotion
A cultural concept that has existed since the 19th century
The word nostalgia was created as a medical term in the 17th century. The term was coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer to describe the psychological state experienced by soldiers away from home.
The etymology is
- nostos (homecoming)
- algos (pain)
In other words, it is ““the pain of a place to which you cannot return.’’
In the 19th century, this concept spread as a theme in literature and art. Romantic artists painted lost eras and landscapes.
A similar trend can be seen in music.
In classical music, a movement was born to reinterpret folk songs and folk music. In jazz, a culture of reperforming standard songs was formed after the 1920s. Even in rock, there was a return to the blues in the 1960s.
In other words, music has always looked back.
However, the nature of nostalgia in the Internet era is different from that of the past.
It is not a personal memory, but a media memory.
Internet nostalgia is a feeling of nostalgia not for ““one’s own past,” but for ““cultural past.”
“Shared memories” created by digital culture
Pseudo-nostalgia created by the media
A strange phenomenon occurs in the Internet age.
It”s a feeling of nostalgia for a time you haven”t experienced yet.
For example, a generation that did not know about the 1990s
*VHS picture quality
- Windows 95 interface
- Old commercial music
- mall music
Sometimes I feel nostalgic.
This is a phenomenon called ““media nostalgia’’ in sociology.
The Internet provides a vast archive of video and audio. As a result, people can consume past cultures as if they were real experiences.
On YouTube
- 1980s TV commercial
- 1990s game music *VHS recorded anime
- Late night radio
etc. are being uploaded in large quantities.
These function as a shared cultural memory device.
As a result, people come to have a common “pseudo memory.”
The Internet has created nostalgia as a shared memory rather than an individual memory.
Nostalgia as a music genre
The advent of vaporwave
In the early 2010s, a music genre was born from the Internet.
Vaporwave.
This genre is from the 1980s and 1990s.
- Corporate music
- elevator music
- Shopping mall BGM
- CM music
It was music that sampled, slowed down, and processed things like that.
What makes it unique is its theme.
Vaporwave is
- Capitalism
- Consumer culture
- Digital society
It began as an art that satirizes.
But at the same time, this genre has generated a strong sense of nostalgia.
The visuals of vaporwave
- 1990s CG
- Old Windows screen *VHS noise
- Japanese font
etc. were used.
They were memory fragments of the internet generation.
Vaporwave is more than just a music genre. It was an emotional expression for the internet age.
Vaporwave was the first “nostalgia music” created by the Internet.
Lo-fi hip-hop and everyday nostalgia
Internet background music
In the late 2010s, another form of nostalgia music spread.
Lo-fi hip hop.
This music is
- record noise *Tape distortion
- old jazz samples
It is characterized by such things.
Thanks to YouTube’s study music distribution, this genre has spread worldwide.
What is distinctive is the role of music.
Lo-fi hip hop
- study
- work
- reading
It is used as background music.
In other words, this is music for everyday life.
The sound is just like an old cassette tape. A warm, slightly cloudy sound.
It is in contrast to the perfection of digital music.
Nostalgia functions here as a sound of reassurance.
Lo-fi hip hop has become a symbol of “quiet nostalgia” in a digital society.
Why the digital age seeks nostalgia
The opposite direction of technological evolution and emotions
The Internet has spawned the fastest technological innovation in the history of music.
- MP3 *Streaming
- AI music
- Algorithm recommendation
But interestingly, the more technology advances, the more music tends to move into the past.
This is also a phenomenon that cultural researchers have pointed out.
There are three main reasons.
The first is information overload. The Internet provides a huge amount of music, but it also creates fatigue.
The second is identity stability. Nostalgic music provides a sense of security in a rapidly changing society.
The third is admiration for analog. Digital perfection can sometimes feel cold.
Nostalgia music was born as a reaction to this.
The more technology advances into the future, the more human emotions tend to return to the past.
Chronology of Nostalgia in Internet Music History
Nostalgia has grown stronger as internet culture has evolved.
Is nostalgia the future of music?
The idea of retro-future
There is another concept in modern music.
It is retro-future.
this is
“The future seen from the past”
That’s the aesthetic.
for example
- 1980s futuristic city
- Cyberspace in the 1990s
- Early Internet CG
etc.
This aesthetic also influences music.
Synthwave, retro electro, vaporwave. All of this is music that reconstructs the past’s view of the future.
In other words, nostalgia music is not just a retrospective.
It is also a way to imagine the future.
Nostalgia is a feeling of looking back on the past, but also a culture of imagining the future.
Endless nostalgia
Memories of the Internet never disappear
Culture was once forgotten.
When records went out of print, music disappeared. Television programs also disappear from memory unless they are rebroadcast.
But the internet is different.
Everything is saved.
YouTube, cloud, archive. Culture remains somewhere unless it is deleted.
In other words, future generations will experience all eras simultaneously.
In this situation, nostalgia never ends.
Every time new music is born, it quickly becomes the past. And the Internet preserves that past.
Music always exists on the border between ““now” and ““old.”
And the Internet has blurred those boundaries to an infinite extent.
Nostalgia has become the sound of the Internet because the digital world has ““endless memories.’’
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