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Nostalgia has always been a favorite theme in popular music. Back in the '50s and early '60s, a longing for the past was invariably cast in terms of a relationship gone wrong, but the idealism and disillusionment of the late '60s prompted a growing introspection which lead to songs like The Beach Boys' "In My Room"—Brian Wilson's regressive ode to a childhood world where he could "lock out all my worries and my fears."

In the following years, psychedelia's influence on rock and pop would greatly increase the music-buying public's tolerance for nostalgic reverie. The trend didn't die down in the '70s so much as become grimmer with the realization that there were plenty of societal woes that the '60s' social revolution had failed to change. Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," from their 1979 opus on alienation, The Wall, is a perfect example of this less hopeful form of remembrance—"The child is grown, the dream is gone / I have become comfortably numb."

The '80s would bring the seeds of the "indie" revolution on both sides of the Atlantic. During this time, nostalgia in music lost a good deal of its existential burden, as songwriters like The Replacements' Paul Westerberg or The Smith's Morrissey placed sentiments in a more focused, humanistic context—one that was easily relatable to your average teen anywhere from Minneapolis to Manchester.

Around the same time in England, "twee" pop bands cropped up on labels like Creation, Cherry Red and Sarah Records. The past being sought by these bands was a conceptual as well as a personal one, based on a love for the music of the '60s and the emotionally simple world that could be imagined while sitting in one's room listening to old records. Yet, in emulating their heroes, the songs these bands wrote were mostly in the tradition of boy-wants-girl or boy-lost-girl wistfulness—a tradition always alive and well in the lives of all young people.

In the '90s, stylistic revivalism would take on a far more sonically focused character as well, with bands like Stereolab placing an emphasis on the use of vintage equipment to achieve a truly retro sound. Something similar was happening in the electronic music world, a movement spearheaded by Aphex Twin's preference for '70s analog synthesizers. Taking influence from AFX's most ambient moments, Boards of Canada came up with Music Has the Right to Children in 1997. A masterpiece of musical nostalgia, the album was created by two brothers intent on recapturing the feel of the old 8mm nature films they'd been shown in grade school. In pursuit of that goal, their use of vintage keyboards was augmented by deliberate attempts to age the recordings, using techniques such as tape degradation.

But nothing dates like the future. Recognizing this, bands like Air and Broadcast took inspiration from futuristic music of the past: the former mixing space-age, bachelor pad ambience with '70s prog and funk and '80s electro-pop, and the latter re-casting early synthesizer music and '60s film soundtracks as droning, expansive pop songs. Air's taste for retro equipment and nostalgia-inducing soundscapes was realized most fully on The Virgin Suicides soundtrack (2000), while Broadcast's retro-futurism peaked with HaHa Sound (2003).

Keep reading for more on "the new nostalgia" »

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