An Article By Lawrence Hart
Nostalgia has a way of masquerading as truth. In music, it often presents itself as authority declaring what is “real,” what is “lost,” and what today’s artists supposedly fail to live up to. But beneath its warm glow, nostalgia is selective, emotional, and sometimes misleading. It doesn’t preserve the past as it was; it preserves the past as we felt it. And that distinction matters.At its most honest, nostalgia is not evidence of superior music. it is evidence of familiarity. It reminds us that music, like taste itself, is acquired.
The Comfort of Remembering Wrong
A few days ago on Obasanjo’s internet, a group of people were arguing who is a better musician between Fela and Wizkid. Now if you are objectively looking at it, if you say Wiz is greater, you are right, and if you say Fela is greater, you might also be right. I’m sure there’s one millennial eyeing me now, but how many Gen Zs grew up listening to Fela? Just a handful. But Wiz has been giving us bangers since 2010, which is the average time most Gen Z started listening to music.
When people say, “Music was better back then,” they are rarely talking about the full musical landscape of the time. They are talking about a curated memory: the songs that survived, the emotions attached to specific moments, the context that shaped how those sounds landed. Nostalgia edits history. It erases the mediocre releases, the forgotten artists, the industry politics, and the experimentation that didn’t quite work.
This is why nostalgia can feel like a scam. Not because the past didn’t produce great music, but because it convinces us that greatness was effortless, constant, and universal. It wasn’t. Nostalgia doesn’t just remember music; it protects it from criticism.
Music Is an Acquired Taste
Very few people fall in love with unfamiliar music immediately. What we call “good music” is often music we’ve had time to understand. This is very evident when we see the older generation struggle to understand the craze behind Mavo music but the young man is popping in every Gen Z circle but repetition breeds recognition in Gen Z words “Everybody go feel the Burti”.
Once you accept that music is an acquired taste, the hierarchy between “old” and “new” begins to collapse. The past no longer stands as a benchmark of quality but as a reference point in an ongoing conversation.
Nostalgia as a Creative Engine
Ironically, nostalgia is not just a weapon used against modern music. It is one of its most powerful tools.
When artists sample older records, echo familiar rhythms, or reference past aesthetics, they are not attempting to recreate history. They are translating it. Nostalgia becomes a bridge, allowing listeners to move backward and forward at the same time. A younger audience discovers older music through modern voices, while older listeners find echoes of familiarity in new sounds.
Letting Music Grow
When nostalgia becomes doctrine, it suffocates creativity. It traps artists in expectations they didn’t create and audiences in comparisons that ignore context. It turns memory into a weapon and evolution into a crime.
But when nostalgia is treated as a reference rather than a rule, it enhances the listening experience. It reminds us that music is not static, that taste matures, and that today’s “soulless” songs may become tomorrow’s classics—once they are given time to live, breathe, and attach themselves to memory.
Music does not need to return to the past to be meaningful. It needs the freedom to move forward without being haunted by an edited version of history.
Nostalgia should not decide what music is allowed to be. It should simply remind us where the conversation began.
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