“Retromania”
Total recall: why retromania is all the rage | Music | Simon Reynolds | The Guardian
… if we look at what’s happening in the music scene, for instance, it’s hard to escape the view that the past is what’s “in” in so many different genres. there’s hardly anything really innovating going on. …
Taking a longer view of history might make the situation more clear. The last 50 years lie within the approximately contemporary period, not the past. Therefore what Reynolds calls “retromania” should really be called a cult of the contemporary. This makes more sense when you consider the cutoff point of his article: anything before the last half century doesn’t exist.
(Note: a ‘cult of the contemporary’ would be consistent with lack of internal criticism. Impolite exceptions hint at what’s lacking: 1, 2. That kind of criticism has a conventional aspect in some genres - in white music too; there was a time when the Beatles were criticized by other white artists - but the currently prevailing attitude is the opposite of critical; the artists of the last 50 years are simply a pantheon. Reynolds’ article provides lots of examples though he fails to note the contemporary bias and asserts the opposite.)
