Miami nights 1984 early summer songs
The paradox of this form of nostalgia is that much of the nostalgia in these cases is for impossible situations here, users long for events that never existed, or are completely fictional. Listeners collectively embrace the chillwave, synthwave, and vaporwave reinterpretations of these eras, often relying, in some part, on their own memories, but ultimately creating something that is simultaneously nostalgic and new. 15 Although the genres on this “nostalgia genre continuum 16, 17” certainly make heavy reference to both the music and imagery of the 1980s and 1990s, it is an imagined form of the 1980s and 1990s that never existed, or did not exist in the form suggested. While Georgina Born and Christopher Haworth have discussed some of these genres, with reference to the internet-mediation of several related genres of the 1990s and 2000s, 14 and Glitsos has discussed vaporwave specifically, these genres as a collective and interrelated whole have not been given enough attention in English-language publications. This article discusses the imagery that connects the disparate genres of chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, as well as vaporwave’s subgenres, and argues that these form a kind of collective “reconstructed nostalgia,” shared by listeners.
Emma Winston and Laurence Saywood suggest that, in the case of lo-fi hip hop (as well as other music on the nostalgia genre continuum) “the specific, personal nostalgia becomes merged, in real-time, into a past which the listener already knows never to have existed.” 10 An attribute of a person’s experience while listening to a song may include how aroused a person feels during listening, as well as the particular emotions that a person experiences during listening.” 8 In sum, nostalgia usually relies on “a person’s relationship to a given song, which may be expressed as how familiar they are with it, as well as the degree to which the song is associated with a personal memory.” 9 In the case of the music within the nostalgia genre continuum, this is upended. 7 Nostalgia for music usually tends to involve familiarity “a person’s relationship to a given song may be expressed as how familiar they are with it, as well as the degree to which the song is associated with a personal memory. 5 Barret and Petr Janata suggest that “nostalgia is often evoked by personally salient music,” 6 while, for music that is unfamiliar, it is unlikely that autobiographical memories will be evoked. An examination of listeners’ narrative explorations of these genres posted online suggests that users engage knowingly and willingly with this “reconstructed nostalgia.” Ultimately, this forms a collaborative and collective universe used by listeners as a method of escapism, through both their own imaginations and online comments.įor Frederick Barret et al., nostalgia is a “complex emotion that gives rise primarily (albeit not exclusively) to positive affect and serves to counteract sadness and loneliness,” frequently triggered by music. Through a discussion of the visual and musical connections that draw these genres together, the concepts of nostalgia in music (as well as the related concept of “reconstructed nostalgia”) are explored.
This article argues that the re-interpretation of cultural memory is an important structural feature in chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and vaporwave subgenres such as mallsoft and the associated Japanese “city pop” revival. The memories evoked, however, tend to rely on unrealistic depictions of reality and center on times and places that have perhaps only existed in the listener’s imagination. Although these genres certainly approach nostalgia in different ways, they each rely on imagery that evokes nostalgic feelings or memories in a form of collective, imaginative self-soothing. This is the case for both the cover art used for these releases, as well as compositional techniques used in the music itself. In chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and their respective subgenres, a common element is the thread of nostalgia, constant in each.