Why Do We Have Nostalgia?

I've been trying to figure out why we are so enamored with the songs and artists of the past . When you hear someone sigh and exclaim, "No one writes good songs the way they used to," you might want to throw up your hands, especially if you are a songwriter and have been writing songs since you were ten.

All of us, who write, live to believe we could accomplish one song that might stick, or transcend us.

Someone I know in the UK expressed that The Beatles were both a blessing and a curse to British music. "On one hand, " he said, "they were sheer genius, and their music will live forever."

"But," he added, "on the other hand, it feels impossible to create any song that would be as good as what they did. We are forever in the shadows of their prowess."

I had the sneaky feeling in the UK that there was always a quest to find the next Beatles. Which boy band would it be? Blur? Oasis? NO pop band in Britain could escape the reference unless they were a punk band, or shoe-gazers or a part of the groove and beats scene.

Still, last night I participated in the annual Nilsson Sing-Along, an event that involves a string quartet, a full rock band, pianists, a xylophone, and vocalists who could sing the phone book. The intention was to honor the songs of Harry Nilsson. Everyone could choose a song, and request accompaniment, be it band or orchestral. Fern (Fernando Perdomo)and I chose "I'll Be Home," a Randy Newman song that Nilsson recorded. We chose to each take a verse, and contribute a guitar solo each between verses, asking only for accompaniment from a pianist. You might say we did the song our way, but we were attentive to the Harry Nilsson phrasing.

Everyone who performed took Harry to heart, and it was very clear that a lot of listening was done in preparation for the performance.

Thirty seven musicians were involved. There were two acts. All of this took place in a bar: Molly Malone's, on Fairfax, in mid-city Los Angeles.

What has always been fascinating about the Sing-Along is that no one sings along.

No one in the crowd talks over the music. Everyone listens to everyone and appreciates

the songs with a deep respect and collegial spirit.

Is this a nostalgia for a time we no longer live in? Harry Nilsson was a signed recording artist, but he certainly did not have to promote himself using social media. He didn't like performing, so he didn't tour. He wrote and recorded music with his friends.

Many people in the 70s who were lucky enough to be signed lived a life of community. In Laurel Canyon, musical artist had dinner, jammed, sang together, slept together, did drugs together. And they didn't have cell phones or computers or the pressures of high rents and multiple jobs.

For all we know, they had other pressures. But the wave of nostalgia is so sweet, we don't smell the hardships. We see a world without this notion of climate change, without AI and with greater privacy, and more connection to time, space and nature.

It saddens me to think that when we listen to the music of the 70s, we escape into a time period when people seemed to be having more fun than we have. Their gas was cheap.

Social programs were not threatened, they were expanded. Movements and change seemed possible.

But also to consider: the music of Harry Nilsson and others from the 70s is tuneful and unrestricted to genre.

A Nilsson song can feel like jazz, then folk, then something incendiary (like "Jump into the Fire") But it is for everyone: children, old people, beautiful people, awkward people.

I think our clinging to the music of the past has a lot to do with us yearning for what we don't have now. We yearn for rock festivals that everyone can afford. We long for everyone having a beach house, not just the uber wealthy.

The music of former times seems to reflect a society that, although tumultuous , was affordable for everyone.

And the music was crafted, and written for everyone. This is what has made it endure.

Everyone can find a Beatles song they love and can relate to. But in the uber-genre-specific world that Spotify makes us live in, there's too much narrowing of tastes and not enough risk. Having too music can mean that listeners create false groups and stay within them, never challenged to expand their tastes as the algorithm gives them exactly what they know they like. And songwriters write within a genre, forced to use streaming services to figure out where they can be heard and not ignored.

Funny that as we live in a world with too much, it feels we are starved and under-serviced and crave what our parents naturally had and didn't question.

It's hard to know whether there could be a wave of great songwriters, like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Crosby Stills and Nash. There are too many to listen to, and radio is not the one media that drives and connects listeners.

In a time when we can choose, we are nostalgic for a time in which curators chose for us.

Nostalgia can conflict with new creators who are simply not heard because they are new and not familiar and not doing cover tunes.

I think if we are to advance the next greatest songs of all time and begin in the 2020s, we have to curtail the nostalgia a bit and take some chances.

For the very young, this may be no problem.

For those who have discovered the past and have a love and romance for it, there may be a gentle escapism that is not unhealthy. Nostalgia provides historical connective tissue and helps us to listen and know where we came from. It inspires our writing.

But if we want new songs, we've got to also be adventurous and dare to believe that greatness is not necessarily a thing belonging to older generations.

To love, to know, to absorb, but then to leave too and to venture out, to make mistakes but to create something new that others feel and need.

This is what must drive us.

If not, there are always wedding bands. And THE VOICE. And American Idol. And corporate cover gigs.

Obviously this is a deep subject. But thanks for reading along so far. TBC