How YouTube rock 'n' rolled back time.(Features)

Byline: Tom Cox

Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past

by Simon Reynolds Faber & Faber [pounds sterling]17.99 [pounds sterling]15.99 inc p&p

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According to Simon Reynolds, we live in a pop culture obsessed with its past - and that's why there hasn't been any genuinely new music for years. From the Fifties to the Nineties, we always had something fresh to listen to because new styles kept emerging, but the past decade has not followed suit.

Since 2000, the most notable musical styles have all been rehashes because our digital world makes older music easy to listen to - and copy. 'The avant garde,' says Reynolds, 'is now the arriere-garde.'

As a music writer, Reynolds has championed new sounds - rave, hiphop and post-punk - so fans like me, obsessed by Led Zeppelin and the early Seventies, must make him despair. At least his belief that the endless parade of acts who mimic old music can never match its excitement gives me an excuse to stay in the Seventies. But that's also the problem: our lust for collecting everything from the past could mean 'pop ends, not with a bang but with a box set whose fourth disc you never get around to playing'.

One problem is, of course, the internet. In Reynolds's best chapter, he analyses how YouTube's pop scrapyard has made older songs so easily available. That means new acts have to compete with five decades of music rather than just each other.

The book loses its way a little as Reynolds goes on to explore his favourite pop genres and give us too much detail on the history of retromania. However, he is soon back on track, and it's hard not to agree with his conclusion that digital entertainment has made life feel faster, but condemned our culture to near-paralysis.

Tom Cox