Radiohead return to touring after seven-year hiatus
The band first found success in the 90s. After a summer of nostalgia, from Oasis's reunion tour to Pulp's new album, what's the psychology behind this?
Radiohead return to touring after a 7-year hiatus.
Radiohead returned to London with a series of concerts over the last five days, their first live performances in the UK since 2017. This comes after a summer of 90s nostalgia from the Oasis reunion tour to Pulp’s new album to the 90s house classic ‘Where Love Lives’ being the soundtrack to John Lewis’s viral Christmas Advert.
Different arrangements included pedals which looped and altered Yorke’s vocals and counterpoint between drummer Phil Selway and percussionist Chris Vatalaro, who has joined the band for this tour. During Friday’s performance, guitarist Jonny Greenwood — who has scored numerous film soundtracks, most recently Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — layered live and electronic textures, at one point experimenting with an analogue radio.
Dr Gary Christopher, whose research specialises in nostalgia, told City News that music is perfect at “bringing people together because it doesn’t matter that you weren’t brought up in that era…nostalgic memories could potentially link parents, children, grandchildren, if they listen to the same music.”
The nostalgic experience does not solely consist of reliving moments from our ‘reminiscence bump’ but also “creating new memories and one of the ways of doing that is through shared music.”
Appealing to fans across generational divides
Radiohead have become increasingly popular not only with 90s kids reminiscing their halcyon days but younger audiences.
Tracks have gone viral on TikTok, such as ‘Let Down’ from OK Computer (1997), which entered the Billboard Hot 100 this August.
“I told my kids, who are 18 and 21, and they said, ‘What do you expect? Teenagers are depressed. It’s depressing music!’”
The Sunday Times reporter noted that Yorke “quickly add[ed] that it is also a very beautiful song, and his children agree.”
What’s behind this revival?
“The key thing about nostalgia is that it’s linked to core memories, very personal memories”, Dr Christopher said.
“[It] helps people feel that although times may have changed, they’re still the person that they’ve always been… It’s like a sort of emotional blanket.”
He also said that music is particularly evocative, even in the initial seconds of a song we are immediately transported back to a core memory.
Radiohead is a major band of the 90s and for people who grew up in that period: “There’s something called the ‘reminiscence bump’ where people in their teens through to their thirties, the types of memories that they develop then are the strongest and they shape people’s identity”, he said.
This complements the broader context of 90s nostalgia in which even those who were not alive during the period embrace an idealised vision of the era. Dr Christopher notes, “one of the things that nostalgia is very good at is buffering against a sense of threat or stress. It could be the case that we’re living in an uncertain time and the 90s get mythologised maybe as being more hopeful, maybe a less online pre-smartphone type era.”
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HeadlineRadiohead return to touring after seven-year hiatus
Short HeadlineRadiohead's return ties into the recent wave of 90s nostalgia
StandfirstThe band first found success in the 90s. After a summer of nostalgia, from Oasis's reunion tour to Pulp's new album, what's the psychology behind this?
Radiohead return to touring after a 7-year hiatus.
Radiohead returned to London with a series of concerts over the last five days, their first live performances in the UK since 2017. This comes after a summer of 90s nostalgia from the Oasis reunion tour to Pulp’s new album to the 90s house classic ‘Where Love Lives’ being the soundtrack to John Lewis’s viral Christmas Advert.
Different arrangements included pedals which looped and altered Yorke’s vocals and counterpoint between drummer Phil Selway and percussionist Chris Vatalaro, who has joined the band for this tour. During Friday’s performance, guitarist Jonny Greenwood — who has scored numerous film soundtracks, most recently Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — layered live and electronic textures, at one point experimenting with an analogue radio.
Dr Gary Christopher, whose research specialises in nostalgia, told City News that music is perfect at “bringing people together because it doesn’t matter that you weren’t brought up in that era…nostalgic memories could potentially link parents, children, grandchildren, if they listen to the same music.”
The nostalgic experience does not solely consist of reliving moments from our ‘reminiscence bump’ but also “creating new memories and one of the ways of doing that is through shared music.”
Appealing to fans across generational divides
Radiohead have become increasingly popular not only with 90s kids reminiscing their halcyon days but younger audiences.
Tracks have gone viral on TikTok, such as ‘Let Down’ from OK Computer (1997), which entered the Billboard Hot 100 this August.
“I told my kids, who are 18 and 21, and they said, ‘What do you expect? Teenagers are depressed. It’s depressing music!’”
The Sunday Times reporter noted that Yorke “quickly add[ed] that it is also a very beautiful song, and his children agree.”
What’s behind this revival?
“The key thing about nostalgia is that it’s linked to core memories, very personal memories”, Dr Christopher said.
“[It] helps people feel that although times may have changed, they’re still the person that they’ve always been… It’s like a sort of emotional blanket.”
He also said that music is particularly evocative, even in the initial seconds of a song we are immediately transported back to a core memory.
Radiohead is a major band of the 90s and for people who grew up in that period: “There’s something called the ‘reminiscence bump’ where people in their teens through to their thirties, the types of memories that they develop then are the strongest and they shape people’s identity”, he said.
This complements the broader context of 90s nostalgia in which even those who were not alive during the period embrace an idealised vision of the era. Dr Christopher notes, “one of the things that nostalgia is very good at is buffering against a sense of threat or stress. It could be the case that we’re living in an uncertain time and the 90s get mythologised maybe as being more hopeful, maybe a less online pre-smartphone type era.”
London stations are exhibiting their seasonal Christmas tree, which has raised questions of whether these displays are festive celebrations or clever pieces of brand promotion.
