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Tangentially related, I once read someone arguing that artistic nostalgia moves in twenty-year cycles, as writers, directors etc. grow up and make artworks either set in or heavily reminiscent of the time period in which they grew up. This phenomenon is best illustrated by the music video for "Buddy Holly" by Weezer, directed by Spike Jonze, which uses trick photography to make it look like the band is performing in an episode of Happy Days. That is, it's a video from the 1990s which is a nostalgic throwback to a sitcom from the 1970s, which sitcom was itself a nostalgic throwback to the 1950s in which it is set.
True to form, various films and TV shows from the 2000s had a nostalgic 80s setting (e.g. Donnie Darko, set in October 1988: writer-director Richard Kelly explained that he decided to base the setting on his own childhood rather than setting his coming-of-age story in the present day and getting the teenage slang and cultural references wrong). The British singer-songwriter La Roux made a name for herself in the mid-2000s with a sound that knowingly called back to the synth-pop of Eurhythmics and Depeche Mode.
But I feel like we've been stuck in a bit of an 80s nostalgic rut for a long time. A full decade after Donnie Darko, Drive with Ryan Gosling received praise for its soundtrack full of modern electronic songs knowingly calling back to 80s synth-pop. Four years later, Stranger Things came out on Netflix, with its exaggerated and heightened portrayal of the 1980s of Steven Spielberg. In 2020, The Weeknd attracted critical adulation for mixing up his pop-R&B sound with an album incorporating retro 80s synth tones and drum machines. And that's not even touching on video games, wherein you could spend a lifetime playing nothing but the retraux 8-bit shovelware clogging up Steam mimicking the look and sound of NES and SNES games and never run out.
In 2026, there is absolutely nothing new or surprising about movies, TV shows or music knowingly incorporating the aesthetics of the 1980s: it amounted to flogging a dead horse a full decade ago. But creators seem strangely reluctant to progress to the next phase, wherein 90s nostalgia reigns supreme for a generation. (The only medium proving an exception to this trend is video games, in which 8-bit RPGs and platformers have belatedly given way to so-called "boomer shooters" and survival horror titles mimicking the graphics of the original Silent Hill on the PS1.)
And I suspect this is illustrative of a certain kind of cultural stagnation. For most of the twentieth century, a combination of cultural shifts and technological developments meant that the music of one decade sounded completely different from that of a decade prior. A pop song from 1955 sounds nothing like one from 1945, likewise for 1965, 1975 and so on. But by the 90s, the pace of change had slowed to the point that the era no longer felt especially distinct from the one following. A pop song from 1985 sounds completely different from a pop song from 1995, but a pop song from 2005 doesn't sound that different from a pop song from 1995. The 1980s are hence the last decade with a distinct aesthetic which you can knowingly mimic in a way that feels different from the present day: since then we've been trapped in the Eternal 90s/00s. Announcing that your album is a consciously nostalgic throwback to the sound of the 1990s hence comes off as oxymoronic, like announcing that it's a consciously nostalgic throwback to 2026.
This hypothesis also explains why, as mentioned above, video games are the only medium doing the 90s nostalgia thing, and why I think it's unlikely we'll see a trend of 00s nostalgia in video games any time soon. The 1990s were the last decade in which graphics looked meaningfully distinct from those of the decade following. I'm not claiming that the AAA graphics of 2026 look identical to those of 2004, but it's been a case of slow incremental marginal improvement, wholly unlike the quantum-leap sensation of going from Half-Life to Half-Life 2. I think the days of being awed when a new video game achieves a heretofore-thought-impossible level of graphical fidelity are decisively over.
I feel like it's mostly a cohort size effect. In the 90s and 00s, bankable nostalgia was mostly about the 50s and 60s, because boomers were the ones indulging in it. Now, millenials are a growing demographic indulging in nostalgia, and the era that boomers, gen-x and millenials could all compromise on was the 80s, boomers were taking power over from their own parents, gen x was in its teen years and some millenials were kids.
As boomers die, I feel the late 90s and early 00s are going to have their time in the limelight. I'm less sure about the 10s. Like the 70s it felt like a transitional decade few people are going to be nostalgic for.
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I read somewhere that Stranger Things could only have been set in the 1980s, because the 'kids on bikes having an adventure' only works if the kids are allowed outside. The decline does seem to have happened a bit later than that, but the principle is correct.
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