The nostalgia boom is getting Ludacris (and ridiculous).

Faces from the past are infecting concerts, festivals, charts and streaming services.

“Where is this going?” asked Jack Tame.

“How is this going to affect musical trends?” he queried.

“Will this change what we listen to?”

In May of 2020, I joined Tame on his Saturday morning radio show in the middle of lockdown, phoning in from my bedroom. The topic was Charli XCX’s excellently abrasive, nihilistic, insular album How I’m Feeling Now.

That record nailed how I felt about Covid at that time: angry, burnt out, over it. I loved the British pop star’s bedroom thrasher, but Tame hated it, so he changed the topic and asked me to make some post-Covid music predictions.

His questions caught me off guard. I ummed and ahhed and stalled.

Finally, I said: “Nostalgia. It’s going to be huge. Anything that reminds us of better times is going to go off … If Pearl Jam want to tour the world for two years, they can.”

Pearl Jam are, of course, doing exactly that. They’re due here in November for two shows out at Go Media Stadium. (Full disclosure: I purchased tickets to both.)

But Eddie Vedder and co’s resurgence is just the start of what has become a full-blown nostalgia explosion. It is rife. It is all-encompassing. It is everywhere, infused in our venues, taking over our festivals, running amok through our charts and smothering our radio stations and streaming services.

You can’t escape it. In the past few months, Limp Bizkit packed out Spark Arena, Live and Incubus sold out shows in Auckland and Christchurch, and 90s tribute acts exploded in popularity. Across one weekend, you could see Dinosaur Jr, Blink-182, Mr Bungle, Queens of the Stone Age, The Melvins and Mogwai all play in Auckland.

Later this year, 70-year-old Jerry Seinfeld will perform a sold out show at Spark Arena, while Coldplay, Pearl Jam, Iron Maiden and one version of UB40 will tour here. An upcoming hip-hop festival features Xzibit, D12 and Obie Trice. Crowded House will soon release a new album. Tribute acts for The Doors, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, and Nirvana are playing shows in Aotearoa this year.

This is not unique to New Zealand. Coachella’s wildly messy recent events were rife with old school bands, as 90s acts Sublime, Deftones, and Blur played on a bill topped by Gwen Stefani’s reunited No Doubt. Alice Cooper, Blondie, Psychedelic Furs, Wheatus and Wolfmother have just wrapped a five-date Pandemonium Rocks tour across Australia. The Smashing Pumpkins are touring again. Alien Ant Farm and POD are releasing new albums. It’s insanity.

And yet it keeps on going. Recently Sophie Ellis-Bexter topped the charts with a song from 2001. Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’, which directly borrows from J-Kwon’s 2004 single ‘Tipsy’, is all over radio. Spotify’s most-played songs are jammed with tracks more than a decade old. (Last year, Six60’s ‘Roots’, from 2011, was No. 5.)

Even Taylor Swift is getting in on the act, jacking her own dated sound, and referencing a relationship that’s at least 10 years old, for her latest 31-track new album, The Tortured Poets Department, on which nearly every song treads the same weary, bleary path. (Don’t tell my daughter I said that.)

And now we have Ludacris, an artist who has never performed in New Zealand before, and is more widely known for his really average acting in the Fast & Furious movie franchise, coming to headline our biggest summer festival, Juicy Fest.

This is ludacris and ridiculous.

I may have predicted this, but I’m starting to hate it. Nostalgia is a closed loop that leaves little room for progression, innovation, new sounds or fresh trends. When we’re relying on older acts, we’re trading in the past, and we’re living on borrowed time.

I hear over and over that local artists aren’t able to pull the crowds they used to, that younger artists struggle to get a foot hold. Promoters tell me smaller acts can’t tour sustainably because everyone’s spare cash is going on massive arena and stadium shows, often headlined by pre-established nostalgia acts.

What happens when nostalgia is no longer just a part of the industry, but gobbles up much more of it to become the main thing.

I don’t know the answer. But I’m worried we’re about to find out.

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