The Strokes broke through in the early 2000s with crisp-toned vintage guitars and an unapologetic croon from their lead singer. It was to be a decade marked by a return of sounds from the past.Despite the vastly different genres, the Strokes, Amy Winehouse, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, TV on the Radio, the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, and Bloc Party were all part of this wave of “retromania.” Far from hiding it, each of them reveled in it — not only the sounds but the aesthetics, from Winehouse’s beehive hairdo to Interpol’s skinny ties. For the Strokes, their music blended early Tom Petty with arty downtown bands of the late 1960s and ’70s like the Velvet Underground and Television. For Franz Ferdinand, it was 1970s iconoclasts Roxy Music and Gang of Four. For the White Stripes, it went back further to early Delta blues, peppered with a little bit of 1960s garage rock like the MC5.This isn’t to say it was bad music just because it drew from older styles. Much of it was good, even excellent. Retro-ness had a darker side, though, what cultural critic Mark Fisher identified as a melancholic component, as if certain artists were not just remembering the glory days but finding themselves “haunted” by a “future just out of reach.” For Fisher, this backward turn was a testament to the “slow cancellation of the future,” the death of a meaningful alternative to capitalism.Today we’re haunted not so much by melancholy but doomerism — the idea that music is now in decline and will not get any better. In a 2024 poll, Americans ranked the 2020s as the worst decade of music since the 1930s, matched by a significant decline in consumption of current releases. People are especially troubled by AI music — not to mention ghost artists, platform marketing, quasi-payola schemes, and the dominance of streaming. (Oh, good news: you can gamble on music now too.)Retromania is definitely back, as new artists produce…
