The Past Wasn't (Necessarily) That Great

I spent the weekend wishing I went to a music festival in 2013. I then realized I was romanticizing the past without reason.

A few weeks ago, I ranted about how I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing when artists perfectly recreate their songs live on stage. But talk is cheap. I decided to put my money where my mouth is and release a live recording of my song “Obliged to Call”. Though the studio recording is a pretty standard indie rock track that blends drum machines with human drummers, the live performance is a slow, shimmering dream. Before I explain why you’re lying to yourself, give it a listen.

Stop Romanticizing Music of Yore

I’ve been to a good amount of music festivals. Boston Calling. Bamboozle. Austin City Limits. But by my estimation, all music festivals fall short of Bonnaroo. Bonnaroo is 4-day music and arts festival in Manchester, Tennessee that’s been held nearly every year since 2002. Though the festival has folksy, jam band roots, artists span nearly every genre at this point.

I went to Bonnaroo in both 2014 and 2015. It was a magical experience for multiple reasons. Primarily, unlike many other festivals, you have to camp at Bonnaroo. This might sound nightmarish, but it means you have to be a special kind of crazy to go to Bonnaroo. You aren’t going to stop by for the afternoon and catch a show or two. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. Because of that, the festival attracts outrageous characters that bring an energy you can’t find anywhere else.

Secondly, the Bonnaroo line-up is almost always packed with great acts. Here is who was there the first year that I attended.

If Elton John, Jack White, and Frank Ocean weren’t enough to get you excited, just peer down the list and you’ll see how stacked this lineup was. You’ve got hip-hop heavyweights like Chance the Rapper down on line 11. You’ve got pop stars like Sam Smith on line 14. You’ve got Grammy Award winners like Jon Batiste all the way down on line 23. How did Bonnaroo manage to book all of this talent?

Though it probably wasn’t easy, it likely wasn’t as hard you’d expect because we are projecting the present onto the past. In 2013, Chance the Rapper was a rising star with two lauded mixtapes under his belt, but he had never released a hit single or been nominated for a major award. When I saw Chance at the festival, he was playing on one of the smallest stages at 2:30AM.

Bonnaroo’s main stage one of the two years I attended [Photo: Monica Wojtal]

Likewise, Sam Smith was still a year away from releasing their smash debut album In the Lonely Hour. Smith was so unknown to me that I not only didn’t see his set, but I had a front row seat for it and left before he began. I had been there to see St. Paul & the Broken Bones, one of the last listed bands on the lineup. They were the first group to perform at one of the smaller tents on the second day of the festival. They would soon open for The Rolling Stones on their way to being quite popular. After their set ended, I left to grab lunch and then see Jake Bugg. Smith’s music would elude me for at least another year.

In short, music festival lineups of the past will frequently look better than lineups of the present. The smaller artists on the current festival haven’t had a chance to blow-up yet. If you don’t trust me, I decided to quantify this phenomenon by looking at Bonnaroo’s 2013 lineup.

Bonnaroo 2013 was dizzyingly good. My friends and I always wished we could have gone, but we were seniors in high school and school was still in session. Was the lineup really that good, though? Or were we just looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses? To see, I looked up the most popular song of every artist on this lineup in 2013. I then noted if that song was released before or after the start of the festival. You can see the data here.

Of the 95 acts on the lineup, a whopping 38 (40%) hadn’t yet released their most well-known song when they performed at the festival in 2013. Let me get more specific. If Kendrick Lamar only came on your radar when he released “HUMBLE.”, you probably wouldn’t have been amped to see him at Bonnaroo 2013. “HUMBLE.” wouldn’t come out for another 4 years. That said, when you look at this lineup today, you’re going to associate the Compton rapper with all of his success since 2013. It’s hard not to. But it makes you think the past was better.

This is a similar phenomenon to how many people have a nagging feeling that pop music is getting worse over time. While it’s possible that’s the case, there are two biases that we need to be aware of.

• We don’t listen to the bad music of the past anymore. All of the most celebrated works rise to the top over time. We don’t have the luxury in the present. We are still sorting through everything.

• When people espouse the belief that music of the past was better, the point in the past they are talking about is typically when they were in high school and/or college. Songs from those time periods are wrapped up in such foundational moments of our lives that it is hard to parse if we like the songs or the memories associated with them.

It’s important to be aware of these biases. When we romanticize the past, it creates the illusion that not only are things getting worse but that there’s no way for them to get better. One of the goals of this newsletter is to disprove that notion. It’s one of the reasons I close each week with two song recommendations, one of which is from the last few weeks. I want to make sure you know that there is always something cool going on, that somewhere there is a kid getting inspired to make the next great thing. You just have to look for it.

A New One
"Sea Star" by St. Paul & the Broken Bones
2023 - Spacey Soul

I’ve only gone to two concerts by myself. One was a Gaslight Anthem show where they wouldn’t let my friend in because they thought he was drunk. (Spoiler: He wasn’t, and security refused give him a sobriety test). The other was a St. Paul & the Broken Bones shows at a tiny bar in Boston.

At the time, I was only familiar with one song by the group. In fact, I think I only had listened to them because I wanted to listen to one song by every band on the Bonnaroo lineup before I went. Regardless, I got a single free ticket through my college radio station. The show was an electrifying soul revue of sorts, the group closing with a jaw-dropping rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness”.

They blew up soon after. I doubt they ever played a venue as small as the one I saw them at ever again. Though their music remains firmly entrenched in southern soul, they’ve explored spacey abstract music over their last few albums. The slow burning “Sea Star” is a good example of that.

An Old One
"Djama" by Amadou & Mariam
2008 - Afrobeats

Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia were on line 10 of Bonnaroo’s 2013 lineup. The Malian couple met 40 years earlier at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind. “Djama” is a great demonstration of how Amadou & Mariam are able to use musical stylings from all over the globe to create a sound that is relaxed yet exhilarating.

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