“I don’t like nostalgia, unless it’s mine,” said Lou Reed, with a bad-tempered smirk. “It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia,” added Frank Zappa, with a humorous frown. But what is nostalgia, and is it good or bad? Well, of course, it’s a bittersweet both. And arguably grains of it run through all music where we cannot but hear inescapable echoes of the past. In fact it is all around us in every aspect of culture and surroundings, from photography to furniture, sounds to styles, food to cars, retro in retail, all in a constant recycling of roots and influences and recapturing of eras, but how does it work in song?
Nostalgia is a sentimental look back at the past to the “good old days”, but it’s not all a fluffy glow. Originally the word was coined by a 17th-century Swiss medical student, from Greek derivatives meaning painful, aching homesickness in reference to mercenary soldiers abroad. So nostalgia is a form of melancholy. It implies that the past is better, and it’s an attempt to pull it, at least in the mind’s eye, into the present. Yet while science once thought of it as an illness, research shows it can in fact me beneficial to the brain. Zappa, pushed the musical envelope against nostalgia into the brilliant, innovative and at times abstract and difficult, but other musicians, such as Noel Gallagher, deliberately and unashamedly referenced musical forebears, notably the Beatles and well, Slade, but you could never describe that ballsy Burnage boy as sentimental.
Gallagher used a phrase for a mediocre album title that was first expressed in the 12th century by Bernard of Chartres, who described the metaphor of dwarves carried by the tall, and later in 1676 by Isaac Newton, who said in a letter: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The past can indeed help us develop, but harking back to the achievements of others can also be painful. Harold Bloom’s 1973 book, The Anxiety of Influence, describes the many ways in which poets, particularly those from the Romantic period, struggled with the canon from which they had sprung, and Bloom identifies six forms of revisioning that shape this difficult, creative process. So in song, you may identify where artists have tried to show, or mask their influences too.
Nostalgia in songs can come out in all sorts of other ways. References to the past through the five senses - lyrical or sonic descriptions of sights, smells, touch, tastes and hearing, as well as musical echoes, can all trigger a vivid and positive glimmer of the past. Some even use original clips of yesteryear. Public Service Broadcasting, for example, use news footage of the British Pathé type and archaic recordings with ingeniously geeky glee.
Desirable objects of yesterday may be today’s rubbish, but tomorrow they become … authentic. Chintz becomes choice, kitsch collectible, old toys and tacky pop records may transform into treasure, but not until they have all been thrown out. Time can turn all things a different colour, not merely objects, but memories and associations, slowly brewing, perhaps a generation or more later, into the warm glow of nostalgia, a sentimentality for the past that makes muddy brown turn to a mellow gold. In short, if something is loved once, it can be loved again. And if such a dizzy, transient, perceived vogue can return to the world fashion, art, ornaments or TV, how else does it reflect the stuff of song?
With emotion, that’s how. Jarvis Cocker is a prime example of a songwriter who captures raw feeling with a bittersweet look at the past, and does so with an self-deprecating honesty. He is part of a northern tradition of nostalgia with a gritty, humorous melancholy. And he is also a big fan of kitsch - Toby jugs, pottery dogs, plastic ephemera - that kind of thing. The artist and potter Grayson Perry is an Essex alternative, humorously him- or, depending what frock he fancies that day - herself, combining everyday objects of the mantelpiece, the fond tokens of the aspirational classes. He combines these with humour and tragedy, shaped into old artefacts in pottery, tapestry or sculpture.
While the best artists can turn nostalgia, paradoxically, into something new, the recycling mainly works through the editing process of memory. That is simply how our brains work. But is it a distortion? The popular and beautifully balanced cricket commentator, Richie Benaud, who sadly passed away this year, wrily remarked: “The problem with relying on nostalgia for commentary is that people only remember the good things.” And as Florence King put it: “True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.” While singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey reminds us that fashion “draws inspiration from the best of the past”, the novelist Carson McCullers takes the subject to a more profound level: “We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
Nostalgia brings out mixed feelings in many. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking fondly about the good old days of Top of the Pops, about how it was the focus and talking point of the week. It is easy to forget, when looking back at some old episodes, that 90% of it could be utter shite, but then occasionally you come across one that is pure gold.
With that in mind, I’ve personally been to a few fancy dress birthday parties invited to come as your childhood hero, fictional or real. The results have variously included ironic to genuine recreations of luminaries as diverse as Jacques Cousteau, Mr Ben, George Best, Citizen Smith, Noël Edmonds, Kate Bush and the pope. Then again, for those of us who grew up in the 1970s, in the last few years there has been a form of reverse nostalgia. Much of our childhood gold has dissolved back to a grimy brown in the murky world of child abuse allegations and prosecutions. Mind you, if that gets too depressing, there’s always a way out. I just think about The Clangers and Noggin the Nog. Loved once, loved now, loved always.
So then, look both back and forwards with your song selections for every nuance of nostalgia from fondly long-lost times to sudden triggered senses, and put them in comments below and optionally in the Spotify list. This week’s raconteur of retro and inspector of the sentimental is the brilliant bishbosh. Put forward your nominations in comments below or optionally in the Spotify playlist by last orders (11pm BST) on Monday 25 May for bishbosh’s chosen list published on Thursday 28 May. Those were the days ? These are the days …
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
• Tell us why it’s a worthy contender.
• Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song’s words.
• Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify, SoundCloud or Grooveshark are fine.
• Listen to others people’s suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
• If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com
• There’s a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
• Many RR regulars also congregate at the ‘Spill blog.
