When Mariya Takeuchi sang Plastic Love in 1985, it didn’t even make it to the top 10 in Japan’s chart. However, someone uploaded the song to YouTube in the late 2010s. No label marketing. No fancy MVs. Just a black-and-white photo of young Takeuchi. And the rest is history. Plastic Love blew up, and soon after, Japanese city pop entered Millennial and Gen Z’s playlists.

 

The resurgence of old music is worth-investigating, since the younger generation used to be so reluctant to listen to old music. But nowadays, we encounter old music in short videos. David Bowie’s Starman (1972) plays along with footage of real-life heroes whose good deeds were captured on camera. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’ Ladyfingers (1965) accompanies peaceful sceneries that evoke the type of slow living many young people aspire to have. When the Internet popularized Pedro Pascal and Nicolas Cage’s scene from their 2022 movie, Cass Elliot’s Make Your Own Kind of Music (1969) was always there.

 

As old music seeps into the current global zeitgeist, I can’t help but wonder how the trend translates to the Southeast Asian landscape.

 

Surging soundwaves of Southeast Asian old music

To begin, let’s take a look at Indonesian musicscape. A couple of years ago, Utha Likumahuwa’s Sesaat Kau Hadir (1990) used to be among my dad’s car playlists (but never among mine). You could imagine my surprise when I heard my Gen Z coworkers singing this song. The explanation, however, is rather unsurprising: the song went viral on TikTok in 2023, marking its presence among Gen Z’s music repository.

 

Indonesian singer Utha Likumahuwa from Ambon, Maluku

 

Elsewhere in the Philippines, young people streamed more 70s and 80s music during the pandemic (One News). By the time this article was written, Bee Gees-influenced 1970s Filipino band The Boyfriends had more than 680,000 active Spotify listeners, and their song Sumayaw Sumunod had been streamed more than 19 million times. The nostalgia wave also reached the alt-rock genre, as Eraserheads’ Ang Huling El Bimbo (1995) was found in thousands of random viral Filipino TikTok videos.

 

Eraserheads’ Ang Huling El Bimbo (1995) on Spotify

 

Thailand’s retrospective gaze on old music can be studied through the fame of 1980s musician Bird Thongchai. His hit song “Sabai Sabai” (1987) once painted the lives of Malaysian Gen Z & millennials, who recalled their experiences listening to the song on their way to school. Thongchai himself remains relevant to this day, actively posting content on Instagram.

 

 

So why do young Southeast Asians listen to old music?

Reason #1: Familial ties and nostalgia

Family members of different generations in the Philippines attend APO Hiking Society concerts together (SBS). APO shows how music fills the voids of the generation gap by reminding young people of the good times they once shared with their parents (and grandparents). And old music like this proves that we’re not just hopeless romantics, we’re also helplessly nostalgic. 

 

“My mother and I listen to Peterpan (2000s Indonesian rock band). I also listen to Letto. They remind me of my childhood, particularly when their music videos were constantly played on TV. There’s this specific garden scene that I remember so much.”
– Jessica, 24

 

Reason #2: The old is new

Thanks to creative people who create changes within popular culture, new cultural products (movies, TV series, games) are often accompanied by old songs. These old songs are then recontextualized in a postmodern juxtaposition of paradoxes (pardon my self-indulgent verbosity). Case in point: Deadpool’s movies show gruesome on-screen deaths while old music plays in the background. Not so different from popular video games like Fallout 4.

 

“I found Juice Newton’s Angel of the Morning from Deadpool (2016). They mix new pop culture and old songs. It’s really interesting.”
— Yusuf, 24 

 

“Fallout 4 really exposed me to old music. The game’s post-apocalyptic setting resonates with lyrics such as ‘I don’t want to set the world on fire’. For me, they’re not old. Among popular music nowadays, these genres offer me fresh experiences.”
— Dennis, 25

Reason #3: Auditory boredom
Anyone who learned to play the guitar in the 2000s would know that a lot of music in that era (especially Pop Punk) uses the same 4 chords over and over again. When the Chainsmokers released their hit “Closer” (2017), I couldn’t help but notice that they used 3 chords in a monotonous loop. In 2021, Lisa released her hit Lalisa, which uses 1 chord in most of its parts, with the exception of the major shift in the middle.

 

I admit that even with fewer chords, new music still offers fresh things, e.g. new beats, choreography, and lyrics. But when we look at music from the perspective of chord variety, it’s understandable that music nowadays can seem monotonous, even for Gen Z. Maybe we crave music that sounds more vibrant and colorful, and we find it in old music’s variety of chords and arrangement.

 

“My father had this pile of CDs. I listened to them when I was a kid, as my father put them on speaker. Now they’re in my Spotify playlist. I find the music arrangement of these songs better than new releases.”

— Jeje, 26

 

So, will this old music “kill” new ones?

The younger generation do listen to old music, but it doesn’t mean that this will “kill” musicians who creatively experiment with new sounds. On the contrary, I would argue that the resurgence of old music will give birth to new cultural products in Gen Z’s musicscape. Saliva Bastards’ Friday Night/คืนวันศุกร์ (2007) is once again popular, thanks to the hit movie Oh My Girl (2022). Elsewhere, Dewa 19 collaborated with Yura Yunita and made their song Risalah Hati (2000) a popular sound on TikTok. In Vietnam, songs of the legendary singer Trịnh Công Sơn are sung in My Anh’s EP “Gen Z & Trinh” (Voice of Vietnam).

 

Saliva Bastard's Friday Night gets a fresh twist as a remake in the Korean drama Oh My Girl! 

 

And the blossoming of old music goes beyond mere covers. Young Southeast Asian musicians nowadays aren’t ashamed to embrace old music styles. Indonesia’s Nadin Amizah & Payung Teduh use the 1950s-1960s style (even keroncong) in their popular songs. The Philippines’ Sunkissed Lola may have been formed in 2021, but their music has an undeniable callback to influences from the 1980s-1990s. The emerging Vwave takes Vietnam back to the 1980s (Saigoneer). It seems that old music is making a comeback in both global and Southeast Asian musicscape. If the genre could pick a song for its anthem, they would probably pick Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”.

 

Payung Teduh, Indonesian alternative/indie band blending folk, keroncong, and jazz into their unique fusion sound

 

But what do you think? Do you listen to old music?

Will we always get hooked on music from days gone by?