Music to my Years

It’s a scene you’ve probably never seen before. Until last week.

Joel, a curmudgeonly mid 50s Boomer starts a dusty pick-up truck and scuttles from the garage into a desolate, sagebrush lined street. “Leave it. Put it back,” he gruffs to his co-pilot, a spritely teenager named Ellie who pops in a cassette tape. She flashes a devious smile. The song flips on for a beat.

“Oh no wait,” he barks, as if she were about to flip the dial into silence. “This is Linda Ronstadt. You know who Linda Ronstadt is?” his demeanor softening with each millisecond listening to her classic ballad,?Long, Long Time.

And so ended the third episode of this winter’s most water-cooler/Keurig worthy chats—HBO’s PlayStation-based sleeper hit, "The Last of Us”. The final scene with Linda Ronstadt’s?Long, Long Time?is indeed incredibly moving yet it’s incredibly depressing. Like swallowing my stock of Ativan depressing.

Unpopular opinion or not, Ronstadt is smoking hot this week, oh almost 53 years after the song’s release. According to CNN, between 11pm and midnight on Sunday, Spotify reported a 4,900% stream uptick of?Long, Long Time. Hence, virality. Depeche Mode’s?Never Let me Down?played during the final shot of the show's pilot, tripling from 26K to 83K streams between Sunday and Monday.

So why the comeback for comeback songs?

Last May, Kate Bush’s?Running up the Hill?made Gen Z’ers and Millennials a little more euphoric in wireless headphones. The song hit No. 4 on Billboard and No. 1 in the UK. Millions of streams a day occurred in the first week of the “Stranger Things” season 4 release. Compare that to 1983—Running up the Hill?peaked at No. 30 and wireless headphones was the stuff of science fiction.

A few months later, the billion+ hours viewed of “Wednesday” ushered the Wednesday dance to TikTok’s FYPs everywhere during the holidays. It also resurrected The Cramps' 1981 song?Goo Goo Muck,?with a 50-fold streaming surge in November. And it’s a recurring scenario poised to keep repeating. Wouldn’t be too surprised if a?Comeback Category?was added this year to the Billboard Music Awards.

Rehashed singles with?zero?cultural relevance besides the content it appears on are experiencing higher streams than music released today—which also speaks to the music being released today.

For Ronstadt’s?Long, Long Time, it’s the show (or content)?that connects the music to human emotion. Maybe it’s not about the music at all. If the content doesn’t resonate and the song is a slam dunk it most likely won’t trend. Think of Rihanna’s single this year for “Wakana Forever”.

As one of the most successful artists?of the century?her hiatus comeback felt a tad flat. RiRi did an interview at the “Wakanda Forever” premiere admitting she had no clue when?Lift Me Up?appeared in the film. Distant from the content.

Lift Me Up?debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is the best-starting radio single of her career. But its success doesn’t feel predicted on the content it was made to pair with, rather with the brand it’s associated?with. It also shows the disenfranchisement of media—one being radio the other streaming. Which oh which metric counts? Airplay or streams?

Close to the content. “Wednesday” actor Jenna Ortega and director Tim Burton hand-picked?Goo Goo Muck?for the famed dance sequence and “Stranger Things”, well, that show just speaks for itself.

Great content. “The Last of Us” shines brighter than dystopian dross like “Fear the Walking Dead”, “World Beyond”, “Z Nation” or “The Strain”. “The Strain”? “Z Nation”? “World Beyond”?

Exactly.

“The Last of Us” episode, aptly named after the Ronstadt ballad, personifies acting perfected with a gorgeous score, solid pacing, and stunning cinematography. But its theme of pairing—from friends, business partners, protectors, lovers, our sexuality and even the connection of ‘us’ to the bigger picture—all so central to the storyline it makes?Long, Long Time?act as the perfect leitmotif and why it pairs so darn well.

Just like rabbit and Beaujolais.

See that’s the thing with the billion+ hours viewed of “Wednesday” and “Stranger Things” and the brilliance of this episode of “The Last of Us”. Audiences connecting to content so rapidly; it’s creating an almost?instant?nostalgia revisited ad-nauseum via Alexa or Spotify. But without the content being über potent—pairing won’t occur.

In which case, even one of the most depressing, tear swiping, total downer tunes in history becomes a track worth tracking and a song worth listening to again, again, again and again.