Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past

"Retromania" is a long, extensive thought-piece on the rise to dominance of "retro" culture by the expat British pop critic Simon Reynolds (b. 1963). While Reynolds looks at the influence of retro in many areas of culture, from fashion to cinema to television, the real focus is on pop music. As we are living through a (permanent?) high tide of retro, it is impossible to fully understand as it seems to swamp every aspect of our cultural lives, so it's hardly surprising that Reynolds seems at times puzzled by the phenomenon. But he approaches the topic with intelligence, honesty, an almost bizarrely extensive knowledge of pop music history, and also a flair for writing. I found the book to be fascinating and I am sure I will be reflecting on the ideas Reynolds presents in the future. Finally, I found Reynolds to be a pleasant critic with whom to explore this topic - he isn't grating in the way so many critics can be, which is no mean feat.I have a couple of comments and criticisms but let me start by summarizing the various parts of this sprawling and idea-filled book:Reynolds lays out the initial approach to "retro" in his introduction, wittily titled "The `Re' Decade." What is retro? Reynolds later on presents a parsing of the word when covering 1960s fashion. Writers on fashion differentiate between "historicism", which is inspired by styles from a fairly remote time period (say, the Edwardian period), and "retro", the self-conscious remaking of art initially made within living memory (e.g. writing a song that sounds just like Alice in Chains' 90s output). Reynolds rightly comments that the two categories flow into each other and points out how the 2000s (which he calls the "noughties") involved the recycling of every style. He senses that this re-cycling has overwhelmed the forward- or inward-looking creative impulse and wonders why this urge to recycle has become so strong and whether it portends a poverty of artistic creativity: "Is nostalgia stopping our culture's ability to surge forward or are we nostalgic precisely because our culture has stopped moving forward?" Then he quotes the eclectic songwriter Sufjan Stevens: "Rock and roll is a museum piece." Reynolds returns to a general reflection of the issue in his concluding chapter "The Shock of the Old", where he meditates on why he is so uncomfortable with the retro phenomenon. But note that this book is an examination and not polemical commentary.In between, he covers many topics: the resurgence of reunion tours and retrospective recording issuances in the 2000s, the influence of digital copying on the creation of a shallow grazing culture among listeners and viewers (I could write an entire review about this interesting chapter), record collecting in the age of cheap digital copies, the rise of "curators" specializing in all byways of pop music and other art forms, and the fact that this retro consciousness actually manifested itself in Japan in the 1980s, before its full rise to prominence in Europe and the Americas. There's a very interesting chapter on fashion in the 1960s, on the 1950s revival (which never ends), use of music samples and the reaction to retro-mania, involving a desire for greater orientation towards the future.In examining the subject, Reynolds deploys not only his extensive knowledge of pop music (and I mean extensive - this book gave me a full picture of all this music I will never hear - which is actually one of the themes in the section on technology and record collecting) but also insights by well-known writers such as Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, of course, and also applies Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence" idea.Reynolds is a snappy, stylish writer. For example: "Metastasis, the word for the spread of disease through the body, inadvertently pinpoints the malaise of postmodern pop: there is a profound connection between meta-ness (referentiality, copies of copies) and stasis (the sensation that pop history has come to a halt)." Nice phrase turning there.I'm just scratching the surface of a rich book, one that has been written out of passionate interest. I have a couple of comments that I will briefly add before recommending that you order this book and read it. First, I wish Reynolds had paid more attention to demographics. We live in a weird culture where adolescent musical tastes are retained seemingly in perpetuity into old age. The fact that the developed world is in the midst of a major transition as the swollen post-war generation ages and assumes a majority status is logically going to have a big effect on cultural trends, given this retention of tastes. Reynolds is seemingly oblivious to this, based on his extensive references to punk and post-punk music. Punk to me is a minor footnote to music history (I give the bands credit for humor and not taking themselves seriously), but the point is that Reynolds grew up with this music and refers back to it constantly, seemingly out of all proportion to its interest. This constant thinking about punk is natural, given the retention of tastes and Reynolds' demographic. But a twenty-something referencing punk today is going to mean something quite a bit different from when Reynolds does. So one of the interesting things about current retro culture is how influential it is on young people, who re-create the 60s or 70s without having lived through them. I wish Reynolds had been more focussed on this distinction. Also, note how Japan - the harbinger of our demographic shift - indulged in retromania in the 1980s (oh oh). Secondly, I wish Reynolds had spent some time thinking and listening to an echo of the retro phenomenon in the classical musical world, the emergence of neoclassicism (a word which only briefly appears in the book) in the early 20th century (e.g. Igor Stravinsky work in the 1920-30s). I think a look farther back in history would have provided a bit of context. Third, Reynolds puzzlingly doesn't devote enough time to rap and hip-hop, which exhibit many retro traits and are an important part of our current ahistoricity and retromania. But these quibbles didn't interfere with my appreciating Reynolds' thoughtfulness and ability to integrate materials and thoughts. "Retromania" is a fascinating book which I think you will like.

I bought this book because I share the author's fascination about how so much of today's pop culture recycles, remixes, or simply worships the pop culture of the not so distant past. I was a bit surprised, however, to learn that this book is 95% about pop/rock music. You will find a little about fashion, a little about art, but next to nothing about film, TV, or literature. If the word "Culture" were replaced by the word "Music" in the title, it would be a bit more accurate.That said, Simon Reynolds is a walking encyclopedia of rock, and he name-drops seemingly thousands of recording artists and movements, at least half of which are profoundly obscure. Though my knowledge is far more limited than his, I didn't find Reynolds' tone to be snobbish or exclusive. He clearly wants to share his passion for music history and has taken care to write something that anybody with a healthy interest in pop/rock over the last 60 years will be able to follow.A warning, though: the book covers a LOT of ground. It's not a brisk or easy read - you may find yourself, like me, going through a couple of pages, then heading straight to YouTube in order to listen to the music of the many esoteric artists that are referenced. But hey, that expands your horizons, which is a good thing.

I found the over-arching idea of this book to be fascinating and the author is clearly knowledgable about his subject. However, unless you are very well informed about pop music since the 1950s, especially British and obscure pop music, you will not fully understand many of the author's references which can get frustrating.Also, there are formating issues -- the author relies heavily on sidebars, which end up mixed into the main text in a broken way on the Kindle.

the writer seems to have little to say in why pop culture is tending towards hidebound recycling and nostalgia. i'd have thought that that was hat the book would be about. but nope. typical music writer tendency to turn their writing into a flex on how many obscure bands within obscure subgenres they can rattle off with a who influenced whom debate that really doesn't matter. not once in book does the writer bring up demographics, which seems to me like an obvious topic for discussing why a culture takes on it's particular characteristics. for instance, if a society has lots of children, and it's median age comes down to 23, that is likely to be a dynamic and inventive society. if on the other hand a society has few or no children and the median age is 44, that society can be expected to be more conservative, and more interested in the culture of it's own youthful days..... which is to say hidebound. but this thought never seems to cross into the author's head. in fact almost no thought or idea or theory presents it's self to him. he just points, sputters, and sniffs his own farts. it gets pretty tedious long before the midway point of the book. he doesn't even have a chapter on movies and how sequel and franchise driven they are and you'd think that would be a ripe topic for exploration. nope. here's six more pages of rattling off obscure bands.there is nothing informative here

I started this thinking it was something I'd been waiting for, analysis of impact of current technology on the nature and experience of culture. It's there but incomplete and soon bogged down in an ocean of necessarily haphazard detail that exemplifies the predicament it had started by trying to describe and analyse. First part 5 stars, bulk 2, average 3, average.

fantastic analysis.

Got repetitive real fast. Summary: Today's pop culture gets all of its styles from past generations; today's pop culture has no soul nor style of its own. The end.

10/10.

If you can put aside this book as being a thesis and think of it more as a one-sided argument with some bloke (albeit a well informed, verbose and well educated bloke) in the pub, it is actually a very good read.OK, so it drags in places and could have probably lost 20% without damaging the argument but Simon Reynolds does make a very good point and that is, essentially, can you name a single track from the past 12 years that would have seemed out of place, beyond comprehension, in the '90's? I could perhaps argue a case for people like Skrillex, but then Reynolds would counter whether it's truly new music or is it a logical follow on to the real game changer which was early 90's rave? And has Skrillex and his dubstep contempories started a teenage movement that's infultrated fashion and language? That's why it's an argument and no so much a thesis - yes Retromania can be flawed and you don't have to agree with everything Reynolds says, but he does make a very, very good point.Without a shadow the noughties will go down in history as the first decade of popular music, dating all the way back to the jazz age, where the technology (ipod, Youtube) were the real stars, the revolutionaries that changed everything - not the Beatles, Bowie or Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk or Grandmaster Flash. As Reynolds points out, the musical difference between the years, say 1978 to '79 or 1991 to '92 were immense but did 2004 feel any different to 1998, or 2010? Not really.Has music stopped progressing because we favour its past? If we do, is it because there is now such a wealth of historic creativity to draw from, to inspire us, and that ocean of reference is available to everyone on itunes, Youtube or illegal download at the instant click of a button, so why do we need to keep looking forward? And even if we want to, how do we escape this omnipresent past? Do we want to live dangerously anymore? It's not in Reynold's book but perhaps a quick look at the UK's top 10 selling singles of the 2000's can go a long way to answer some of his questions: Number one - Evergreen by Will Young, two - Unchained Melody by Gareth Gates, three - Is This The Way To Amarillo? by Tony Christie. Two more of the top 10 are cover versions, and a further two TV talent show winners. Music as pure showbiz rather than heartfelt rebellion. Is this how pop will die?

I have a couple of years on Simon Reynolds....but seems like our minds are tuned in.I remember the moon landing of '69...and have been I guess ever since a "Space Child"..not Cadet I may add.My life has been full of music..i played it, listened to it and perfomed it...and loved it. I was fortunate enough to be around and old enough to "get" punk...Simon Reynolds BIG thing was Post Punk.I didn't "Get"rave or acid house....I guess I was always more guitar orientated rockist.So anyway ..I was also an avid reader of William Gibson and Alvin Toffler....so I was expecting so much more from the "Future" than we have got. Worrying that Gibosn no longer writes books based in the future...but the present.I think his conclusions are valid and true.....the last two decades have provided for me as a music lover ..with nothing really very exciting...i have avoided the use of "Original"...because we all know....blah blah blah..At first,I just thought it was my age...that I had seen the "what comes around turns around ".But it is deeper than that and Simon Reynolds has put it done in black and whiteSo retro is not cool...nobody likes to admit they are retro....but there isn't any where else to go for input and influences but back....rehashes of rehashes but rather than say...going back ti the fifties.....musicians are only stepping back ten or twenty years.A very enjoyable read as have his other books been. Kept me interested all the way through...although the last section does seems to drift off a little.(Cue the stylophone break as Space Oddity fades out....)If you have any interest in music/sociology/literature...or arts in general this is an excellent read.

Retromania is a history of modern pop obsessed with the “rift of retro”, which is to say, the moment in (Reynolds thinks) 1983, when people stopped looking for new things and simply started cannibalising the old. It’s fascinating for me, not only because it’s my own life that I see stretched out for consideration, but also the most exciting elements of cultural studies for me, such as Situationism, and Futurism. Reynolds has some wonderfully Foucauldian approaches, including a section where he writes the history of the “I Love the [decade]ies” TV shows, in which he delves into the changing aims of the programme makers, and observed that the “I Love the Noughties” was so premature that it was actually broadcast in 2008.

A brilliant analysis of popular music's current malaise i.e. an almost total lack of originality, meaning, and emotional resonance. By extension, a critique of Western culture's current state of stagnation:"It's glaringly obvious that all the astounding, time-space rearranging developments in the dissemination, storing, and accessing of audio data have not spawned a single new form of music".Artists of the Western world, read it and weep...

Contemporary popular culture studies in music consumption, display and inspiration. Witty, insightful and also personal analysis about how the digital revolution through internet connecting and sharing has changed the experience of music. The access to any style and time is no more only for little-know-all, but the immediate presence of all the history of music for the new musicians and bands could be a heavy burden for new creation and singularity. How can a band not have hundreds of possible resemblances to other previous successful or alternative ones? The comparisons the author makes about the paradoxes in trying something new in fashion and in contemporary art are brilliant. And also the psychological analysis of the compulsion of collecting in general. And though Simon Reynolds makes us aware that there always have been cycles of looking backwards in music for inspiration, followed by revolutionary leaps forward, still there is a yearning in his writing for future forms of music, as a revival of that spirit of newness and looking ahead. Great!