It's an interesting experience listening to '90s hits now that they are oldies. I certainly enjoy them a lot more now than then, and looking inside my soul I can guess at three reasons:
1. Pure nostalgia.
2. The selection effect.
3. I've grown more tolerant. I now happily (though not ecstatically) bop along to songs which I hated back in their heyday. Ice, ice, baby...
Probably (3) is actually partly nostalgia as well. But it is also that I am not as caught up in the petty jealousies and genre-fan-feuds that I had been as a lad.
This is a big one for me. When someone listens to recent pop on the car radio I want to rail against how cheesy and annoying it is. Then I'll be the one driving and flipping stations and I'll land on some 70s or 80s pop tune and happily sing along.
I realize that it's no less cheesy or annoying but it's familiar enough yet I've not heard it in a couple of years. I can get down with a lot of music but hearing the same damn mediocre song every week, it goes from "eh, whatever" to "dear god why is this still around??"
1. Pure nostalgia.
2. The selection effect.
3. I've grown more tolerant. I now happily (though not ecstatically) bop along to songs which I hated back in their heyday. Ice, ice, baby...
Probably (3) is actually partly nostalgia as well. But it is also that I am not as caught up in the petty jealousies and genre-fan-feuds that I had been as a lad.