pjquinones747: Nostalgia and the Power it Holds

pjquinones747 01.05.23	And for any who did read this far, thank you for allowing me to wax poetic! I got a couple more hours of work to kill so let's have a fun discussion about some of our passions
pjquinones747 01.05.23	your wish is my command. scrubs is up there on my nostalgia list too for sure
mkmusic1995 01.05.23	I recently watched an animated cartoon by Chuck Jones from the 80's called The White Seal and it brought me back to my childhood so hard. I would watch it almost every morning as part of a routine when I would have breakfast at like 6am. It's been at least 20 years since I had seen it, but every scene was so familiar and hit so hard.
JKing92 01.05.23	This is a great thread. I'll run through some artists that hold nostalgic value to me: Smash Mouth: "All Star" was one of the first songs I ever loved. In fact, I loved it so much, that my parents bought me a copy of Astro Lounge for my seventh birthday that September, and on the rare occasion that I hear other singles from that album, many memories of first grade are brought back. Green Day: The first rock band I ever got into. I saw the video for "American Idiot" on Fuse in sixth grade, and purchased a copy of American Idiot with my allowance while holiday shopping. Green Day remain one of my favorite bands of all time, a group whose work continues to connect with me almost two decades after I originally got into them. System of a Down: The first metal band I was ever into. I often saw the video for "B.Y.O.B." on Fuse, and I purchased a copy of Mezmerize at the mall (I also eventually bought Hypnotize on the day it came out). Like Green Day, SOAD are still one of my favorite bands ever, and a foundational band for me. Nirvana: A band that changed everything for me. Prior to getting into them, most of the stuff I was listening to was from the 21st century. But after seeing the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on Fuse, I went and listened to Nevermind, and absolutely loved it. As a 14-year-old who was often made fun of because of his zits and braces, Nirvana taught me that I wasn't as alone as I thought I was. I may have felt like a loser, but at least I wasn't the only one who did. Lady Gaga: This might get me weird looks, but as an openly bisexual man who came out as a teenager, Lady Gaga meant a lot to me around 2009 and 2010. The Fame remains a quite terrific dance pop album, a glitzy, flashy pop extravaganza that unveiled an artist who would go onto become one of the preeminent queer icons of the 2010s. You may love her or hate her, but to me, and many other LGBTQ+ people, she remains a pop legend. Kanye West: I know that he espouses some, uh..., problematic beliefs as of late, but as a senior in high school when My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came out, Kanye was an eye-opener. Kid Cudi's debut was already beginning to help me get back into hip-hop during my junior year of high school, but MBDTF fully convinced me of my genuine renewed interest in the genre after spending the last few years being more into rock and metal. While I never disliked Kanye during the 2000s, I unfortunately was not very familiar with him until MBDTF came out and I instantly loved it. Kanye may be lost in the mental wilderness as of now, but at least the musical excellence he purveyed at his best will always be here.
pjquinones747 01.06.23	Some awesome responses here! Thanks for sharing all this great stuff JKing, I had similar connections to some of these artists too, especially System and middle-era Kanye.
JKing92 01.06.23	Thanks! There were movies (The Hangover), TV shows (pretty much anything that aired on Adult Swim, the channel I easily watched the most in high school and college, but with a special emphasis on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, and Squidbillies), and video games (Super Mario 64, Halo 2, GTA: San Andreas, and Fallout 3, among many others) that I was hoping to include (along with some other artists like Eminem, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie), but sadly, due to a mix of my tendency to deep dive for full context (particularly so that I could point out the specific nostalgic value here), and the fact that we live in a world of character limits, including all of this just wasn't going to work. Once again, though, thanks for the compliment! I always love getting to talk about entertainment that shaped my tastes.
pjquinones747 01.06.23	Something about reliving those moments is just sweet isn't it? Nostalgic games for me are Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 1 & 2, any Total War game up until Rome 2, Age of Empires, etc. Nostalgic music for me is most melo-death influenced metalcore like Trivium, All That Remains, Bullet For My Valentine, etc as well as a random assortment of radio tunes from the mid 2000's and classic rock lol.
JKing92 01.06.23	Radio songs from the 2000s definitely bring back a lot of memories for me, as a Millennial. While there is stuff from that era I hated then and still can't stand now (I don't think anyone could pay me to listen to the Black Eyed Peas, for instance), artists like Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, and Justin Timberlake (among other stars) definitely bring back fond memories of that era (regardless of how much I may or may not like their music in question), when I was in middle school/early high school and those artists were huge. I guess it just goes to show how beautiful looking back on what it was like to come of age can be.
pjquinones747 01.06.23	Everyone I know has some polarizing opinion on the Black Eyed Peas. It's love or hate with no in-between lol. Gaga and Lil Wayne however, are forever goated.
DominionMM1 01.06.23	transformers: the movie (1986) definitely does it to me
JKing92 01.06.23	Yeah, the Black Eyed Peas definitely make that easy. Songs like "My Humps" and "Boom Boom Pow" are so in-your-face that they practically demand that you acknowledge them strongly one way or another (whether through love of their dancefloor-ready beats or hatred of their lyrical and musical construction). But to be honest, out of the four artists I cited in my "nostalgic radio songs" category, I think that Gwen Stefani is probably my favorite of those four (though I do prefer Gaga by far, admittedly). People tend to dismiss her 2000s work as when she "sold out," but I think she made some genuinely great pop music during this period ("The Sweet Escape," "Cool," "Hollaback Girl" why not, and my personal favorite, "What You Waiting For?," which sounds like The Fame four years before that album actually came out), and she was definitely one of the more daring pop stars on the radio during this era (what other pop stars were building songs around samples of "If I Was a Rich Man" and "The Lonely Goatherd" during this time?). People (especially older, Gen X No Doubt fans) may have been put off by this shift towards a more baldly poppy direction, but I think she was a lot more impactful on pop music than many seem to give her credit for.
pjquinones747 01.06.23	Gwen Stefani was one of those pop stars that fell in the "I'm not sure which pop songs she put out but I've probably heard a bunch of them" category for me besides Hollaback Girl. She definitely had a vice grip on the pop scene for a few good years there. @Dominion i never saw the '86 movie but I remember watching hella reruns of the animated series.
DominionMM1 01.06.23	I put a 90s rock playlist of stuff I remember from mtv and radio at the time together awhile back on Spotify and some of it really takes me back. Not sure if I listen to it because I truly like the music or simply because it taps into that nostalgic part of my brain. Or maybe it’s a bit of both.