The comeback is, above all else, fuelled by a desire to access and experience the cultural moments that defined our lives and identities, not the collapse of cultural creativity. It is rooted in the attachments that people form as they live with music and as they recall those times and experiences...
The announcement that 1980s pop trio
By David Beer, University of York
Bananarama are to reform is the just the latest in a long line of recent comebacks. From Boyzone to Wet Wet Wet, Take That to Jamiroquai, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Stone Roses, The Verve, Sleeper, These Animal Men, Northern Uproar, S Club 7, 5ive and Cast, musicians of old are intent on trying on their faded stardom for size. Even Menswe@r tried it, albeit with only one original member. The news that Elastica were reuniting, however, disappointingly turned out to be premature. Why come back?
Nostalgia undoubtedly plays a part. Inevitably bands who return for a second innings are driven by a desire to revisit particular moments or to experience again music from more youthful times. The myths and memories are likely to mix together a little here.
Some suggest that the prominence of the comeback is further evidence of culture stalling; that we have reached something of a creative dead end and therefore can only look backwards. The point here, mistakenly, would be to think that an absence of creativity has left a void that the comeback fills. A slightly more positive take on this is that we have seen the emergence, over the last ten years or so, of a new kind of retro culture which looks to the past for its resources and which uses pastiche to enliven culture today. Simon Reynolds has called this mythical revisiting of music's archives "retromania".
This may play a part, but I'd suggest that we need look beyond explanations bedded in the music industry if we are to understand the rise of the comeback. We can gain a richer understanding of these comebacks by thinking about how music scenes are deeply rooted in our identities - and about the important role that music takes in shaping how we connect with the social world.
Comebacks seem to be everywhere. They are not limited to a particular genre, but they do often seem to be bound to a particular era. The success levels might vary somewhat, but we seem to be living in a cultural moment that is defined by the comeback. Of course, there have been plenty of comebacks before, but right now they're close to being ubiquitous.
It's tricky to know exactly what is happening here. Music cultures have always had one foot in the past. Classic songs, signature sounds, attachments to older formats like vinyl, intertextual reference points, remastered and reissued albums and the like, have long been a central part of how music is made and consumed. But the comeback is a more material and pronounced version of these tendencies. The comeback represents a more obvious and direct impulse to revisit.
