Lockdown! at the Disco #17: The Nostalgia Episode

Listen to the episode!

Read the transcript of the episode!

Greetings and salutations, superstars! Come in and get comfortable and take a little step into the past with us. Prepare yourself for some warm, fuzzy memories because we’re about to get super misty-eyed up in here…

TRACK ONE: “Playground Love” – Air, Gordon Tracks

That was “Playground Love” by Air from the French duo’s breath-taking original soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and you’re listening to Comics Youth Radio presents Lockdown! at the Disco. This is The Nostalgia Episode where we’re going to be talking about what nostalgia is, why it can be super comforting, and how sometimes – when used badly – nostalgia isn’t always such a great thing.

But we’ll get more into that in a little while! As ever, we’d like to remind listeners that while every measure is taken to keep Lockdown! at the Disco free of explicit language that some songs featured may still feature content that could be inappropriate for younger listeners, so parental discretion is advised.

Now, let’s swing things back to that opening track from Air there and about the movie from which that soundtrack comes from. The Virgin Suicides is a really lovely but dark movie from 1999 about a tragic set of sisters who are forced into isolation by their overbearing parents.

The film is adapted from the spectacular novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, and the story is told from the perspective of the men who loved these young women and who are still heartbroken that they were never given the opportunity to grow up and to flourish and to become.

Both the film and the book are set in the 1970’s and so the story is incredibly nostalgic – as is the phenomenal soundtrack that Air made for it. And there’s this dreamlike quality to the nostalgia at play in The Virgin Suicides – it’s hazy and feverish and so it never feels entirely real.

And because of that the story also talks about the darker side of nostalgia. The past can bring comfort and there are things that take us back to a specific time and place which make us feel and re-experience pivotal times and moments. But we have to be careful not to become trapped there. We have to be careful not to be so consumed by that nostalgia that we forget to enjoy the present.

In The Virgin Suicides, the men recounting the stories of the ill-fated Lisbon sisters have lost themselves to this nostalgic fantasy of a group of young women who they didn’t actually really know or understand. It offers the reminder that nostalgia can be beautiful, but it can also be meaningless as and when it fixates on people or a time which never really existed in the way that they’re being remembered.

Nostalgia is at its most powerful when it reminds us of where we’ve been while also acting as a focus by which we can be guided into the future. And another terrific film which I think demonstrates this idea perfectly is Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce. Essentially, the film is her entire live show from her 2018 Coachella performance, intercut with intimate scenes of her developing the show and rehearsing it while balancing the roles of being a wife and mother alongside it.

It’s a film that’s rich with nostalgia – it drips with it – but it’s also a film that shows you an artist who has always drawn power from the past in order to propel her to greater things in the future. And this is “Crazy in Love” from it…

Requests from Tom and Irish River??

TRACK TWO: “Crazy in Love (Homecoming Live)” – Beyonce
TRACK THREE: “Kids” – MGMT

That was “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce taken from the live album for Homecoming and following that was “Kids” by MGMT, and both of those tracks were requested by Tom and Irish River from our Safe Spaces group here at Comics Youth. 

MGMT’s “Kids” is such an interesting song too, I think. And in an interview with Time Out London, the band shared that their motive and mentality for writing the song was very much centered around the idea of nostalgia. They said that at the time that they wrote kids they “were just happy-go-lucky, going crazy on campus. But at the same time, we were nostalgic for childhood and there was the threat of post-college life coming.”

I also always loved the music video for this song and the quote that begins it – which is weirdly attributed to Mark Twain even though it’s a Nietzsche joint! – and it’s that classic quote of, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster … for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you….”

And I guess that’s a quote that can be applied to all sorts of ‘monsters’ – real and imagined, gigantic and everyday – and particularly those that we might face when peeking into our pasts too.

But the other thing that I love about “Kids” is that it’s both a song about nostalgia but which also evokes a certain amount of nostalgia when you hear it too. It’s definitely a song that takes me back to a specific time and place whenever I hear it.

Hearing it reminds me of dancing very late at night and of working very early in a café the morning after – and of a waning summer sun. It reminds me of things that became hazy and lost.

And this next song is very much the same. It’s full of an intense romantic nostalgia but it also serves a literal sense of nostalgia – and I know I’m not the only person who feels this way about this particular track – that whenever I hear it I can hear the laughter of friends from a certain time, I can feel the exact dance moves I’d throw to it and the floor I’d drag them out on, I can feel the crowd around me and bittersweet ache of youthful heartache.

This is “Heartbeats” by The Knife.

TRACK FOUR: “Heartbeats” – The Knife
TRACK FIVE: “Die Anywhere Else” – Alec Holowka

That was “Die Anywhere Else” by Alec Holowka and it’s taken from the soundtrack to the amazing indie game Night in the Woods. That track is one of the tunes that you’re given the opportunity to clumsily play on bass as lead character Mae. And it’s a real touch of genius with that game that every song you play on it is engineered for you to play badly – to miss notes and beats – so that you really understand and feel the character’s frustration and distress. 

Night in the Woods is an incredible game – one of my absolute, all-time faves which makes me sob my heart out every time I play it – and it’s a game that very much explores the dangers of nostalgia. Particularly in how it deals with mental health and the various life issues being faced by troubled teenager Mae as she returns to her hometown of Possum Springs.

On the one hand Mae needs to deal with a traumatic incident from her past but is understandably struggling to. And on the other, the small town that she’s returned home to is a place that is desperately clinging onto the past – to a faded history and some former glories – rather focusing on the issues that are preventing the town from moving forward and remaining a place where people can work and live.

Night in the Woods is about a lot of things – a single deep dive into this game can uncover all sorts of incredible depths and meaning – but I’m so fascinated about what the game has to say about the dangers of nostalgia when it becomes all-encompassing: Like, how can we possibly move forward if we continue to only allow ourselves to live in the past?

And I think the reminder that Night in the Woods serves up so perfectly is that this attitude can be especially dangerous when it’s applied by and to a place. A large amount of patriotism exists solely around nostalgia – of people clinging onto the perceived former glories that a location enjoyed at some point in the distant past.

The thing is, that kind of nostalgia is an absolute fallacy and that kind of nostalgia is often fixated on a ‘former glory’ that never actually existed. The things that people like this are often proud of came at a high cost to human life and freedom – things that people conveniently ignore while they’re lost in the warm glow of remembering. Even if those memories and that nostalgia is built on a lie or even about a time that the person wasn’t actually alive to experience first-hand.

But it’s understandable, right? Sometimes, it can be easier and more fun to live in the past and so wonderful and cathartic to lose ourselves in an era which we may not have even been alive to experience ourselves. How about the 80’s? Shall we pop there for a while? Let’s do it.

TRACK SIX: “Title” – Disasterpeace
TRACK SEVEN: “Hanging Lights” – Kyle Dixon, Michael Stein
TRACK EIGHT: “Main Title (Assault on Precinct 13)” – John Carpenter

Personal nostalgia of that film and the power of John Carpenter’s work within a nostalgic framework: It’s textured and provocative of a particular era and though it’s one of the most copied sounds in modern music, it has yet to be successfully replicated.

 This next song is requested by Lucas M who says that it makes him nostalgic because “it was one of those songs that was always played in the car when I was little, so it’s always a nice one for me to listen to”

TRACK NINE: “Somewhere Only We Know” – Keane
TRACK TEN: “The Suburbs” – Arcade Fire

TRACK ELEVEN: “The Boys of Summer” – The Ataris