Old Music Popping Up In Unexpected Places

[Satchmo Distel]

Watching 'American Idol' auditions, they sometimes use old tracks to illustrate a particular back story. One of the episodes this year had a track by Yazoo - not one of the big hits (I think it was 'Situation', which went to No. 73 in the US; No. 31 on the 'black' chart(!)).

Adverts in the US have been dropping 80s tracks for a while - Haircut 100, Queen, Heaven 17, etc. The trend was even noted by a DJ on 'First Wave' (the indie but not always indie Sirius XM channel).

This could explained by the average age of advert executives and their target audience but not always: I've encountered 80s music being used to sell products to teenagers.

Sixties stuff is more explicable because some of it has entered the timeless realm of the canon/classics in a way that I don't think the 80s has (or ever will; it can only be "of" that time).

[Auntie Beryl]

The current Lynx deodorant ad is a 90s throwback, soundtracked by Apache Indian's "Boom Shack A Lack".

Perhaps, after a couple of decades of 80s revivalism in certain sections of popular culture, we're going to get the 90s next (which raises questions about which signifiers encapsulate the 90s as a whole).

[Stumpy Pepys]

This could explained by the average age of advert executives and their target audience but not always: I've encountered 80s music being used to sell products to teenagers.

Yes, but I remember ads in the 80s that were using hits from the 1950s.

[3 Colours Red]

(which raises questions about which signifiers encapsulate the 90s as a whole).

Watch out for:
- Curtain haircuts
- PlayStation 1s
- Dial-up modem sounds
- Troll dolls
- Beige, lots of beige
- Shaky-cam with lots of Dutch angles
- Clothes made out of plastic