Taylor Swift will one day be as old as Madonna. And any college girl will tell you that Madonna is old.

The jukebox at the bar: sometimes it plays music, sometimes it functions as a nostalgia machine. These overlap, of course: but sometimes music is played for the ear, and sometimes it is played for the memory.

Different ages play different nostalgia. Some of the younger kids will completely ignore the jukebox when some late fifties song comes on, maybe put on their headphones; others will shake their heads when Jim Morrison croons. Because Jim Morrison croons on the jukebox a lot: I have mentioned before the Jim Morrison fan who dreams of Père Lachaise but usually goes to Hawaii.

The Sixties is obvious Nostalgia; there is not as much love for The Forgotten Seventies, although Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze" does get played once in awhile. A hazy song for hazy memories, with those harmonies that change at the end to the new chords and become something that feels a little disquieting, a little foreboding. Something that feels a little disquieting, a little foreboding: this can play a big part in a relic from The Forgotten Seventies.

There is the Eighties nostalgia, of course, which is listened to the most ironically of the nostalgia selections. Madonna comes into this mix: Holiday, Like Virgin. And the Eighties One-Hit Wonders:

We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well they're are no friends of mine

In the Eighties a lot of people felt that way. People feel that way today, too, but again: ironically. The Hipster Thing. You can have a lot of friends on social media, but there will always be those that are no friends of mine.

Then the kids who have put up with the nostalgia machine go and play their songs. Which are alternative hits of the Nineties and rap from the early 2000s. Yes: their nostalgia, although they don't recognize it as such, yet. But these will be the songs they play twenty years from now, if they happen to find themselves in a bar with a jukebox.

The music of today? Well, the college girls like the Taylor Swift, among other selections. They don't know that this will eventually be their nostalgia. But it will. Taylor Swift will one day be as old as Madonna. And any college girl will tell you that Madonna is old.



- james james

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