nostalgia-of-music

[nostalgia-of-music]

Theme Song Nostalgia

I think the perfect example of nostalgia linked with music would definitely have to be theme songs. Short, catchy, unique themes that prepare you to watch an episode of your favorite show. It is impossible to listen to a theme song without thinking of the show it goes with unless, of course, you've never seen the show. 

I thought it’d be fun to share one of my favorite theme songs, and the memories I have with it. It may not be the most “iconic” theme, but it is the most impactful to me. 

This theme is only 13 seconds long, and it could arguably be the most nostalgic for me. This shows that even the shortest piece of music can have the strongest effect on a person. I recently decided to rewatch “How I Met Your Mother” after not watching it for 10 years. The last time I watched HIMYM I was 10 years old, which is far too young for anyone to be watching a show like this. 

I always planned on rewatching it, but it was taken off Netflix and put onto Hulu, which I didn't have. Just last year, I found out about a deal for college students that allowed me to get Hulu for s much cheaper price. So, now that I finally had Hulu, I revisited a show I hadn’t watched in a decade. 

The second this theme started playing, I was instantly transported back to 5th grade. Memories of watching HIMYM on my old laptop flooded into my head. I remember not telling any of my family that I was watching the show because it was for adults. The taste of the peanut butter crackers I’d eat while watching every night filled my mind.

Something about the theme is super emotional to me. After only hearing it once, it’s impossible not to sing along the next time you hear it. It’s so simple, but so musically beautiful. The descending chords give me such a nostalgic feel to me. This may be in part to the similarities to Pachelbel’s Canon, which uses the same chord progression and brings nostalgia to millions of happy couples all over the world. 

How I Met Your Mother’s theme represents a perfect world to me. Yes, the show follows many real-world problems like breakups, losing loved ones, money struggles, etc. However, through nine seasons, all five main characters seem to always stick together. For over 200 episodes, you can count on one hand the ones where the core five isn’t sitting at their regular booth at MacLaren’s pub sharing stories.

[nostalgia-of-music]

Johan Lenox Interview

The first people that came to mind when I had to think of a primary source to interview about the nostalgia of music were these huge names: world famous film composers such as John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Danny Elfman. I did do my best to reach out to these three, however it was just as hard to get a hold of them as you’d think. None of these composers had a personal email available to the public, but rather the email of a larger company that manages them. Needless to say, these large company emails did not get back to me. 

I was narrowing my options to film composers, but I had to remind myself that musical nostalgia comes from all types of music. So, I decided to reach out to a musician I’m a fan of, Johan Lenox. 

Johan Lenox is a classical prodigy turned hip-hop artist/producer from Massachusetts. He’s worked with some of the world's biggest artists, including Travis Scott, Kanye West, 070 Shake, Mike Dean… the list goes on.  I reached out to him before, a year or two ago, and he’s always super open to talking to fans and giving them advice on their own musical endeavors. 

To reach Johan, I simply tweeted to him asking if he wanted to do an interview for a school project and he responded instantly with a simple “ok”.

I then asked where he’d like to do the interview to which he responded, again almost immediately, Instagram Live… in three minutes. 

I was not planning on him responding so quickly and wanting to do it so soon, so I was rushing to get set up as fast as a could. By the time I had conducted the interview and ended the call, I realized that I forgot to press record. So, unfortunately I can’t give very many direct quotes, but I did remember his general responses and wrote them down the moment I realized I hadn’t recorded it. 

I opened the interview by asking Johan if he had any song, album, or artist that is very nostalgic to him, and if he has any specific memories linked to this song, album or artist. His immediate response was the artist “Ratatat”. Lenox told me that he used to listen to “Ratatat” a lot in high school, so every time he hears a song from them he thinks back to that time. A specific memory he had was sitting in the car with his buddy listening to “Ratatat” back in highschool. 

I then asked him how much he takes nostalgia into account when creating his own music, and if he ever makes something with the goal of people being nostalgic for this song. His response was “it’s kinda hard to”. He told me you never know how people will perceive the music, but it’s up to the people that listen to it and the memories that they create with those songs. He also mentioned that there are ways to make your music sound nostalgic, but he tends to stray away from those techniques because he “likes to make more futuristic sounding stuff”. 

My next question asked him how gratifying it is knowing that so many people have created memories with the music he’s made/ worked on and will continue to for the rest of time. 

My example to him was the last song off Travis Scott’s 2017 album “ASTROWORLD”, titled “COFFEEBEAN”, which he composed the strings for. I always tended to have a nostalgic feeling for this song because it is the last song on a great album, and those strings in particular are always memorable. 

He responded saying “it’s awesome”, but went on to say it’s not as gratifying when he’s working on other people’s music, like the the Travis Scott example I gave him. 

Finally I asked him about his latest album “WDYWTBWYGU”, short for “What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?”. The cover art shows a picture of a child, depicting Johan when he was younger. 

I asked him, “How much of WDYWTBWYGU was inspired by or rooted in nostalgia?”. His response was immediate: “All of it”. He said his childhood and teen years were the main inspiration for this record. One thing he said that stuck with me was that sometimes he will visit his family, who still lives in this town, and it seems like nothing has changed. Everything just seems the exact same as when he used to live there. To me, this seems like it may be the main reason he wanted to get out of there.

All in all, my interview went great, besides the fact that I completely forgot to hit the record button at the start of it. I found myself relating to a lot of what he said as a musician myself. And if you were suspicious about the interview, with me forgetting to record and all, here's the screenshot proof, accompanied by Johan's awesome caption: "some guy is interviewing me for his school project".

[nostalgia-of-music]

How can such a short theme be so memorable?

Multiple times throughout my blog, now, I have mentioned this video about the Disney Channel theme from the Youtube creator known as Defunctland.

This video goes into depth about the mystery of who wrote the Disney Channel theme. Again, I’ve posted this at least twice before, but just to refresh your memory: 

Now, although I did just refer to it as a video, not classifying this as a documentary is an insult to the work this creator puts in. It can be found on many film websites, including IMDB, Top Documentary Films, Letterbox, etc. So, I will be reviewing this video as a documentary.

Not only does this Documentary take a deep dive into the story of the man who wrote the Disney Channel theme but, over its 90 minutes runtime, talks a lot about how memorable this theme is, along with so many other themes for different networks. I think it’s very interesting to think about, not just jingles, but network themes specifically. Most of the time they tend to be extremely short, but extremely recognizable. 

The documentary opens up with its narrator, Kevin Purjerer, giving the viewer the history of network themes and how they came about. The “first iconic sound signature in the United States” was that of NBC. 

These iconic chimes were originally created to signify the end of the broadcast, back when it was only radio, so that affiliate stations would know to switch to the new broadcast. 

Purjerer goes on to list networks that followed in NBC’s footsteps and made sound signatures of their own. These include Nickelodeon, HBO, and later on… The Disney Channel. 

So, to go back to the title of this post, why are all of these themes so memorable? As Purjerer puts it, all of these themes are “Recognizable to generations of viewers.” If you really take a moment to listen to any iconic network theme, all of them seem to be no more than four or five notes long. So how do these themes last for decades and, as Purjerer puts it when talking about the Disney Channel theme, “Dominate through the network’s rise and peak in popularity”?

The documentary doesn’t answer this question directly unless we’re talking about things that are not music. 

Throughout the documentary, the narrator mainly focuses on the things that would play in between shows on Disney Channel, as this is when the Disney Channel theme would be played (rather than showing traditional commercials from 3rd party companies, Disney Channel shows promotional content for everything Disney).

There is a portion where the narrator is interviewing a previous producer at the Disney Channel. She mentions that for over two years leading up to the release of Finding Nemo, they would show short segments about fish in-between shows to almost trick kids into being interested in fish. 

He shows various clips from the early to mid-2000s, the same time I would have been watching Disney Channel. The majority of the clips that he shows throughout this video make me say “Ooh my gosh, I forgot about this!” followed by a flood of memories unleashed from seeing just one clip. 

This got me thinking, that repetition of showing the same thing over and over… Hearing this theme during every single commercial break of my childhood has made it so I can never hear it without seeing those colorful mickey ears in the bottom left corner of the screen. 

During the documentary, Perjerer interviews many primary sources directly from Disney Channel. Since he was trying to solve the mystery of who composed the theme, he started with a loose idea of who to talk to, so he interviewed some actors from the channel. 

Then he interviewed Eric Perlmutter, a composer that worked on different Disney Channel themes, such as the “Disney Channel Movie” theme. 

After that, David Norland, someone who composed extended versions of the Disney Channel theme. 

**spoilers ahead, I highly recommend watching this documentary before reading!**

Later, producers filmed and directed the segments where the theme is played, and finally tell us the composer of the theme was Alex Lasarenko, whom I made my entire last post on this blog about. He didn’t stop there, though. Since Alex sadly passed, he reached out to his living relatives to talk to them about him. 

The documentary tells an amazing story. Throughout its runtime, the narrator mentions how he wishes he wasn’t referred to as a Youtuber but rather as a Documentarian. He cleverly plants little seeds throughout the documentary that get this thought into our heads, before connecting his experience to that of Alex Laserenko. He doesn’t want Laserenko to only be known for these four notes. 

**major spoilers ahead… again!**

So, he reveals that all of the music that we had been hearing throughout the entire documentary was all original music by Alex Laserenko. 

Overall, I learned so much from this documentary. It made me realize how much of a lasting impact the small things we see during our childhood have on the rest of our lives, and how important just 4 notes can really be to millions of people around the world. 

[nostalgia-of-music]

Taking Advantage of Library Resources

I had the chance to bring my research to Rohrbach Library here at Kutztown University, where I was able to find 3 different books that relate to my topic. 

The first thing I did was look for a physical book I could check out in the library. Using the library's online database, I originally decided to search using the keywords “Music” and “Nostalgia”. I didn’t find any physical books with these keywords, but I did come across an Ebook called “Nostalgia and Videogame Music''. This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! 

I still wanted a physical book I could find somewhere in the library. I figured I’d have to change up the keywords I was using, and the book on videogame music that I had just found gave me some ideas for how to do that. So I decided to search for film music, and just like that I found a physical book on the history of film music as the first result. 

For a lot of people, the most nostalgic music will often times be music from their favorite films, so this book is perfect for my topic.

Finally, I went over to “worldcat” to see if there were any books anywhere else that had a book I could use for my research. After a short search using my original keywords, I found a book covering the exact topic I am writing this blog about. The book is called “Music, Nostalgia, and Memory: Historical and Psychological Perspectives”. It isn’t available at Rohrbach Library, or online, so I’ll have to use an interlibrary loan to access it. 

This experience of actually using a library’s resources was extremely eye opening for me. When I began this blog, I thought my subject was far too niche for there to be any extensive research about it done anywhere. Now I have access to an entire book on this topic, just from a quick search on my school library’s database. 

I’ve also begun using the library’s other resources for other personal projects of mine. For example, I just recently rented out a camera from the library to film music videos and promotional content for my own personal music. I’ve been on this campus for four semesters, and just now discovered this extremely useful resource. I’ll definitely be sure to use this library to my advantage for my remaining time in college, and local libraries after I graduate.

[nostalgia-of-music]

This Person Wrote the Iconic Disney Channel Theme

I mentioned in a previous post this video/documentary by the YouTube creator Kevin Perjurer, better known as Defunctland:

This video dives into the mystery of who composed the iconic four-note Disney Channel theme. 

I highly recommend anyone reading this to check out this video at some point (if you don't want any spoilers, watch it before you read this post). It may not seem like the most interesting topic to watch a 90-minute video on, but there is so much more to this story than you'd think.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Long story short, after months and months of extensive research, Kevin solved the mystery. The composer of that unforgettable 4 note theme was Alexander Lasarenko.

Alex Lasarenko was a classically trained composer who worked for various music production companies over the course of his career and sadly passed away in 2020 at the age of 57. Notably, Alex worked for Elias Music: known for creating well-known jingles for companies such as Yahoo, Honda, Intel, MTV, Liberty Mutual, Kellogg's, and the list goes on).

According to a LinkedIn post from someone who used to work under Alex at Elias Music, he was a "tough boss" whose "passion and drive to be the best" helped the company to earn its "Gold Standard".

According to his peers, Alex was also extremely talented. Eric Perlmutter, another Disney Channel composer known for creating the "Disney Channel Movie" theme was interviewed in the Defunctland documentary I mentioned above. When he was told that Lasarenko was the one that composed the theme, Perlmutter's response was as follows:

"How not surprised am I about that? [He was] a genius composer and a good friend" ... "he was really the, sort of, ring leader of all of our composers at Elias." ... "It's tough when you have a boss who's a genius and just an absolute music prodigy" ... "It was incredibly intimidating but hugely inspiring and he was a great leader, and boss as well".

Patrick McDonough, another coworker of Alex's was also interviewed in the same documentary. He described Alex as "Wonderful. Loving, funny, so talented. So incredibly talented that it was just like nothing to him".

So, all in all, if anybody knows about creating nostalgic music/themes, it would be Alexander Lasarenko. Unfortunately, there is only one interview with him online, and he doesn't talk much about the nostalgia portion of his music, but more about his coming up in the music industry. On top of there only being this one interview, there is sadly no way to contact him because he is no longer with us.

However, as I've said about so many other composers and musicians throughout the course of this blog, his music will continue to live on through the millions of people's lives he has impacted with those simple four notes.

[nostalgia-of-music]

Musical Memories in Thousands of Songs

For this post, I was planning on giving you guys some examples of songs that give me some specific, nostalgic memories. I was trying to think of ways to find the right songs to use when I stumbled across the perfect solution: Spotify. Every song I have listened to in the last 5+ years is logged in a database on Spotify.

Every song I have listened to in the last 5+ years is stored in a Spotify database. If I really wanted to, there are ways for me to reach out to Spotify to acquire this database, which would consist of my listening history since the day I first got the app. However, this process would require far too much effort and, for my purposes, there really isn't a reason to do this either.

Spotify has a much more accessible feature that makes much more sense for my situation: Liked Songs. Every song that I've ever "liked" on Spotify is added to an (in my case) extremely long playlist that continues to grow every day. For me, this is a list of 2,383 songs. I enjoyed each of these songs enough for me to "like" them, solidifying their spot in my "Liked Songs".

So, I concluded, what better place to look for songs that evoke memory than a list of songs that I actually like. Rather than just scrolling through this list until something specific caught my eye, I decided to press shuffle and let it find random songs for me. For this post, I shuffled three songs. As it would turn out, I had a small memory for each of these songs.

The first song it gave me was "On My Soul" by Meek Mill. I have a memory from last year of me sitting in my friend's dorm playing Rocket League while listening to "Expensive Pain", the album this song is featured on.

The second song was "That Part" by ScHoolboy Q. For this song I have a memory of my walking to work, as a lifeguard, on an extremely hot summer day while this song played in my AirPods.

The third song that came up was "Something In The Way" by Nirvana. Out of the three, this one evokes the strongest memory. The memory is of going to see "The Batman", in which this song is featured, at the Strand Theatre on Mainstreet. I feel like I can taste the junior mints and rootbeer I enjoyed while watching this movie. I think of the rain outside that night, and how it reminded me of the rain in the film.

All three of these songs evoked very vivid memories for me. After these songs, I did continue going through the songs in my shuffle and found that some songs really didn't have the same effect. The ones that had no effect, however, are songs I really don't know all too well.

I'm curious to know how many other people have memories like this when hearing specific songs.

[nostalgia-of-music]

I just came across this blog about The Disney Channel. Seeing as my blog is about the nostalgia of music, this blog and mine go hand in hand. There are countless Disney Channel original movies containing music, like High School Musical or Descendants, that would remind one of their childhood when listening to it. Not to mention the iconic 4 note theme that plays in between shows:

There's so much nostalgia in the shows we watched as children. For many of us, this nostalgia comes from the music we heard all those years ago. Whether it's High School Musical's "Breaking Free", or just those four notes that played before every show.

Introduction

Disney Channel is an American based satellite and basic cable network owned by Walt Disney Television. Dating back to the 1950s, the first Disney television broadcast came to life to help promote Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). Walt’s vision grew very quickly by partnering up with the widely recognized ABC Television Network. Once Disney signed the agreement, he developed two series for the new network: Disneyland and Mickey Mouse Club. After Disneyland became popular, the company decided to launch The Disney Channel on April 18, 1983, “the Disney name became a staple in people’s homes.” The first ever program to air on the channel was Good Morning Mickey! Disney Channel aired for sixteen hours each day from 7 am to 11pm, and by December 1983, they had over 661,000 annual subscribers. In 1986, Mickey Mouse Club became an immediate hit. Mickey Mouse Club helped launch Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling. By 1997, they decided to drop “The” in the network and rename it Disney Channel. In the year 2002, the network had been watched by over 80 million homes including the new original shows/movies of Lizzie McGuire, The Cheetah Girls, and many more popular shows/movies. The Cheetah Girls was Disney’s first movie musical made primarily for television. The mid- 2000s was Disney Channel’s peak by having their most popular movies and shows premiere including That’s So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, High School Musical, Camp Rock, Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, and many more hits. The highest- rated Disney Channel Original Movie to this day is still High School Musical 2 (2007) with 17.2 million for its premiere. With the highest rated DCOM movies it is no wonder why people still have the love for Disney Channel. Now in 2023, Disney Channel is still one of the most popular streaming platforms over the world.

[nostalgia-of-music]

Music Evokes Memory

B flat. A seemingly ordinary musical note. Just like any other note, this note is in thousands and thousands of songs. Whether it be a passing tone or a prominent part of the piece, B flat, along with every other note in the chromatic scale, is used in too many songs to count. However, there is something about B flat in particular that, when played on its own, transports me to a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Not because this note has some sort of magical power, but because B flat is the opening note to the main theme of Star Wars. 

Every time I hear this note played, it’s impossible for me not to think about that iconic scrolling yellow text that plays at the beginning of each Star Wars movie. 

This doesn’t just happen with notes. Most often it happens with songs. So often, when I listen to a song, I am instantly reminded of a memory I have involving said song. These memories range from memories like where I was when I first heard the song to seeing the song live in concert, to even doing things unrelated to the song (like playing sports, or video games) while the song played in the background. 

Psychology Today puts it perfectly: “When we listen to a piece of music from years ago, we seem to travel back to that moment. We can feel everything as if we were there”. For me, this phenomenon is the closest thing to time travel I will ever experience. I’m able to see where I was, the time of day, feel the weather, and remember what thoughts ran through my head at that very moment. Because of this, each time I listen to music it becomes an extremely nostalgic experience.