usable nostalgia
jangly songs for the summertime and the idea of a "usable past"
If I had to distill my childhood summer experience into a single memory, it would be buying a swimsuit at Wal-Mart, circa 1996. We were always at Wal-Mart. I can vividly recall the details. The heat haze shimmering from the parking lot pavement before the shock of walking into an ice-cold air conditioned store. The taste of a Hershey bar from the checkout lane that had partially melted before making it back to the car. I can still conjure the smell of those Juice Bar gummy bear scented body sprays and I can feel in my hand the shape of those miniscule bottles of Bon Bon nail polish.
It was in my local Wal-Mart that I laid eyes on a swimsuit. I can still picture it on the rack. It was a mid-90s dream: a neon orange tankini with glittery beaded tropical flowers. It seemed to have leapt straight off the pages of the Seventeen magazines I checked out from the public library. I felt that if it were in my possession, I would be propelled to a level of teenage coolness I could only dream of.
I got the swimsuit. I remember putting it on, slathering myself with baby oil, and sprawling on the back porch. I dawdled away long lazy afternoons listening to a copy of Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt on my portable cassette player. No distractions. Just blissful summer boredom interrupted only by another trip to Wal-Mart.
Flash forward to 2025 and I’m still trying to recapture that feeling. On Sunday, I climbed into the attic of our garage and pulled down our inflatable kiddie pool. I purchased popsicles and hot dogs. I made pina coladas. I laid on the porch flipping through a 1995 issue of Spin magazine I’d found at a yard sale the previous day. I went out for ice cream. I slathered myself up with baby oil, but, this time it was baby oil with SPF from the heavily nostalgia-styled brand, Vacation.
And of course, I made a playlist.
Nostalgia has a powerful pull. Even calling these Spotify playlists “mixtapes” is a tongue in cheek, retro suggestion. I think about nostalgia a lot. I’ve surrounded myself with it. I live in a house where every inch is adorned with thrifted treasure. My closet is brimming with vintage clothes. I have two history degrees that have forever tinted my worldview (even if they never did lead to gainful employment).
This week’s track list is steeped in summertime nostalgia. It’s a mixtape that sounds like lazy summer weekends and it’s full of jangly songs perfect for driving with the windows down on your way to waste time at the mall. Some of these songs predate my existence on this planet which makes me wonder: How can I feel nostalgic for music released before I was born? Why do songs like “The Backyard” by Miracle Legion stir up summer memories despite the fact that I wasn’t alive to hear it in 1984?
It’s the same with “Strange” by Galaxie 500 (1989 and I was 4 years old) which kicks off this week’s selections:
I went alone down to the drugstore
I went in back and took a Coke
I stood in line and ate my Twinkies
I stood in line, I had to wait
I shouldn’t be nostalgic about waiting in line, but here I am. I long to stand in a checkout lane staring mindlessly at magazine covers. I want to stand there contemplating the various flavors of bubblegum. Boredom. Truly, I’m nostalgic for being bored.
Nostalgia is a temporal emotion, but it wasn’t always. The word comes from Johannes Hofer in 1688 who noticed the depressive episodes Swiss soldiers fell into while away from home. It’s a combination of the Greek words for homecoming and pain. In its original usage, nostalgia was an illness of misplaced geography. It was later that nostalgia became an emotion tied to longing for days of yore.
Sometimes it feels like nostalgia’s origins as a malady were too quickly discarded. In the world of “make-whatever-great-again” and barely (if that) veiled references to a racist, sexist, and homophobic past, the idea of nostalgia can seem more dangerous than wistful. It can be a powerful elixir for convincing people that things used to be better. Theorists of nostalgia call this “restorative nostalgia.” This is nostalgia that asserts that what was once lost can be regained.
Like politics, pop culture is in a near constant conversation with nostalgia. Movie reboots. Archival fashion. Reissues. Remakes. Trad wives. Red carpet homages. The return of the catalog. Bandage dresses are back (lord help us). My sunscreen is bottled up like a cute bottle of retro baby oil. Everything new is also old. I’ve been reading Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past by Simon Reynolds. Unlike Reynolds,I’m not feeling particularly apocalyptic about the constant churn of recycled past into present pop culture. If anything, I’m fairly ambivalent. It’s hard to get too mad with everything else happening in the world. I simply don’t have the energy or excess brain power to direct anger towards reissues and remakes and songs that sound like songs that sound like other songs.
In my graduate program in Public History, we often threw around the term “usable past.” This meant doing the work of history with an eye towards the present/future and helping the public (both individually and collectively) find something useful in it. History can be used purposefully to help us make sense of our world and what could be.
The drumbeat of “usable past” beat in my ears when I worked in museums and archives. But, I think we can also adapt it to nostalgia. I’ve been thinking recently about how we can employ the idea of a usable past to bend nostalgia towards utility. Cultivating nostalgia through a lens of a “usable past” means taking note of the meaningful things we’ve lost to technology, AI, algorithms, and over-connectedness and reclaiming the things that inspire us, help us make sense of the world, or find solace amidst the chaos. Instead of a usable past, it’s a usable nostalgia.
I wasn’t old enough or cool enough or alive enough to listen to some of the songs on this mixtape but it hardly matters when it comes to usable nostalgia. These songs still allow me to reconnect to memories of a summertime disconnected from phones, social media, and a 9-5. The mixtape alternates between the 80s and 90s. Lush, Beat Happening, REM. Around the halfway point is “Follow You Down” by the Gin Blossoms. A few years ago, I serendipitously discovered they were playing at the World Chicken Festival in London, KY. Paul and I stood in a crowded local park with people who, like me, were also likely trying to recapture the 90s. Amidst the Gen-Xers and Millennials were young people - much too young to have heard the Gin Blossoms at their peak. Just smalltown kids, much like my younger self, with nothing to do on a Saturday night but dance to the Gin Blossoms at their local Chicken Festival. I like to imagine those younger folks in the crowd growing older and hearing “Hey Jealousy” and it triggering a flood of nostalgic feelings for their own youthful summers. Nostalgia built on top of nostalgia.
Related, this week’s playlist wraps with a 2022 cover of a 1998 Smashing Pumpkins song by Wednesday and MJ Lenderman. What is a cover song if not an attempt to recapture something temporal?
I see usable nostalgia as turning all these wistful feelings towards utility. Usable nostalgia for me is not pulling my phone out in the checkout line and instead slowing down and studying everything around me. It’s making mixtapes online with the same fervor I would have given making an analog one in my youth and delighting when a stranger likes it. It’s forcing myself to sit with boredom without the overstimulation of screens. To be clear: I don’t mean reenacting a life that looks identical to a long ago era and I don't mean forgoing all modern conveniences. Usable nostalgia is not about reenacting or recreating the past. Nor is it a way of shielding yourself from the news and current state of the world. Cultivating a usable nostalgia isn’t a simulation or recreation of another era, but mining both real and imagined pasts for ways of being worth reincorporating when everything feels like it's falling apart.
And quite simply, I’ll take my joy where I can find it these days. I'm currently watching my mailbox like a hawk for something I purchased on eBay that I’m planning to build next week’s mixtape around. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but I’ve purchased an item that conjures up so much nostalgic emotion for me that I can’t wait to hold it in my hands. Enjoy this week’s mixtape and I’ll see you next week with the reveal.
from the mixtape archives
If you liked this post, you may enjoy the one below. It’s full of 90s country songs that conjure up a different kind of nostalgic vibe for me. If you’re looking for everything I’ve ever posted on a mixtape, you can access the mega-mixtape (hours upon hours of songs!) here.
This hits home. I understand what you mean about nostalgia for a time you never lived in. Or a time when you were a kid but wished you were a teen. I was a small child in the early 80s, but wish I was old enough to take in the amazing music happening then.