What are some songs that have made you feel nostalgia even though you've never heard it? I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea. Do you think it's inherent in the music or just triggering our own memories? Is it possible to feel nostalgia for something we have no experience with? Would that make it something fundamentally different from nostalgia? I HAVE TO KNOW PLEASE HELP.
Queensryche - Silent Lucidity made me feel nostalgic the first time I heard it, and I was sure I hadn't before. It wasn't the sort of thing my parents listened to, and I don't think it was used in any media.
It’s not just nostalgia. It’s also melancholy. There’s also sadness of time that passed. That feeling is incredibly strong and to me music cuts right into that emotion.
Does it have to be sad? Can it be celebratory if fun memories? I’m watching Jomboy Media as they watch through every episode of Nick Guts. It doesn’t bring about nostalgia, but does make me appreciate my childhood memories.
@@JaysonT1 Theres a video floating around on the internet that people find themselves finding from time to time called the internet checkpoint that often comes with donkey kong country music
Stickerbush Symphony is one of the greatest video game songs of all time. It evokes memories in me that make me wanna cry, but its a happy cry. Like a "you had a great childhood" cry.
I’m 50yo and first heard Stickerbush Symphony about 5 years ago. This, Aquatic Ambience, music from Undertale, Outer Wilds, Florence, Ori, Gris, Hollow Knight, Final Fantasy, Xenoblade, Stardew Valley… so much more… incredible music that brings tears to my eyes. Love your take on this. Great vid.
This song really DOES take me back to my childhood because it's the very first song I became conscious of actually loving. I paused the game for what felt like an hour to just sit there and listen instead of playing the level right away. It was one of the most serene moments in my life, probably the first of few truly zen moments where I felt at peace and everything was perfect. I was in the moment and dialed in.
My brother passed away seven years ago and we spent so much of our childhood playing DKC2. This was his favorite song and he wrote me a letter in his adulthood and mentioned that he would load this song and listen to it and cry
@@TheSinlessAssassin of course; I just love that this song has a quality that made people playing the game just pause and enjoy the music, and that it evoked the same feeling in so many of us
@@sarahnavey me too. As a pretty isolated kid growing up, it’s nice to look back and realize I wasn’t alone in that first ever truly zen moment of my life. If this song meant the same to your brother and he himself meant a lot to you, it adds even more significance to this song.
Stickerbush Symphony is something F-ing magical. I can still remember playing DKC2 being almost a teenager and getting through almost all of the game, just enjoying my time playing Diddy and Dixie Kong... to then start up the level called Bramble Scramble, thinking "Ok, next level", to then be hit by this masterpiece. It felt like doing the ice bucket challenge, but the icy water was a warm blanket. It stopped me dead in my tracks having walked left for like a second, making me literally put down my controller after a few seconds staring slack-jawed at the screen, taking in all the harmonies and sounds Stickerbush Symphony threw at me. It might be one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
i think FM synthesis, in general, is really nostalgia inducing for a lot of people. it has a timbral quality that reminds us of both video game music, and pop from the early 80's through the 90's, which is why it is commonly used in "nostalgic" genres like vaprowave.
@d34thby1337 if I recall correctly, I believe the SPC700 sound chip in the SNES is capable of FM synthesis, but I think you're right that most sounds on the console we're produced using samples. Either way, I believe the soundtrack to the SNES DK games were composed on a DX-7, and presumably this is also how the samples were generated.
There might also be an element of _saudade_ to this. That's a combination of a sadness for what you had and no longer have (usually a lived experience with someone who is no longer alive), mixed with not just happiness [for having had those experiences with that person], but also punctuated with the realization that you'll never again experience those feelings [with that person]. I don't know if any of the branches of the study of human history will ever be able to explain what exactly are the elements of both music and our brain chemistry that make it so that music (out of all other branches of art) tugs the most at our heartstrings, but I doubt that we'll ever stop trying to solve this most profound, intriguing and exclusively human puzzle!
The explanation/theory might be weirdly straightforward 🙂 Music is sound, vibration and frequency. These things are by all means, physics. Water is a very modular substance Human bodies contain an awful lot of water in all major areas Our cells are literally being pushed around in our body, when the music has resonance for us
There is a lot of elegant melancholy to be found in the soundtracks of DKC 1 and 2 - and the feeling of melancholy is like a single half-step away from nostalgia already. Of course, that feeling is like ten times stronger for those of us who can tie the music to our childhoods.
Internet checkpoint song! For the uninitiated, there was a video on youtube a while ago with a japanese(?) title that was recommended to a lot of people, and it became the “internet checkpoint”. Nintendo eventually took it down (of course), and since it has been reuploaded by others. I miss the original, but i’m glad that there’s new videos keeping up the memory.
@@NueThunderKing Thats the thing, it either doesn't have a title, or it's in japanese characters, so either way you can't search for it. It has to find you.
My wife and I both grew up liking different things. She LOVED (and still loves) Pokémon and Legend of Zelda games. I was more into Star Wars and old-school Disney movies and MGM musicals. I also played loads of Nintendo, but not a whole lot of Legend of Zelda or Pokémon. We have a playlist that we compiled and play whenever we have a chill day at home or cooking dinner together, and it's full of orchestral renditions of our childhoods. Like I said, I didn't play a whole lot of Pokémon or Legend of Zelda - but any time selections from those games come on, I'm transported to when I would sit in my room and play Super Mario 64, or when I would take summer trips to Disneyland with my family. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
Amazing timing, I had this SAME experience with Stickerbrush Symphony just two days ago, and have been listening to it over and over and over since then.
It's the part when the guitar riff reverbs in a way that sounds like street traffic, where it almost sounds out of tune. Makes the song seem dreamy or ephemeral.
The Super Nintendo was the first console to have a dedicated sound DSP back then and it was truly a revelation compared to the Genesis/ MegaDrive, many arcade machines and even home computers like the Amiga or the first Macs. I remember letting my characters idle in many games just to listen to the music and the DK titles were particularly good. As a 3D artist I also couldn't get enough of the rich CG backgrounds and characters.
The minecraft soundtrack for certain has that nostalgia / melancholy for days past vibes without me having it played as a child, as the game came out when i had like 20
The comment about playing this game before going off to their grandmother's for Christmas almost put me to tears... that comment really brought me back because the Donkey Kong series was a beloved series that my stepmom and I played a lot... and it was mostly special around Christmas-time. Upon hearing this, I got some serious literal goosebumps. It's special music like this that will continue to captivate for generations to come.
This song was playing in my head on repeat when my wife was in labor with our first son and while I was holding him for the first time. It was so random, but also beautiful. When I listen to Stickerbrush Symphony now, I'm not only taken back to a time when I was a kid playing DKC2 on Super Nintendo, but also back to my son's birth. It's my favorite song and I cry the happiest tears when it plays❤️
I was able to look up Stickerbrush Symphony on Chordify and noticed that it has a hidden Royal Road chord movement. (F>G>Em>Am on C Major). Here, the G major chord is resolving onto a chord that is different from either C or Am. The second thing that I noticed is that the C tonic chord is hardly touched. As David Bennett pointed out, the Royal Road progression is supposed to add a touch of wistfulness to the major scale.
i'm in my house but i want to go home -not mine nostalgia and anemoia have to be the some of the best feelings and the latter is one of my favorite words, so glad you talked about it because as soon as you started talking about nostalgia from games and music that we haven't experienced, i immediately remembered that word, so rare yet so beautiful
The home I want to go to was in 1992, with my siblings annoying me, and my dad was still alive, though grumpy. That was a really good year for me. I do still go visit my Mom who lives in that same house, but it's awfully empty now, even though my little sister is back there for a bit.
Sound waves have the ability to move matter. To assume that sound doesn't move matter in a way in our body that affects our mood would be bold. I think if studied enough, you'd find sound will make certain elements/molecules behave in different ways due to changing shape alone, not to mention undiscovered phenomena. Our ears are right next to all of these neurotransmitters, I would like to think they have a certain interaction on some level.
Checkpoints pop up even when you’re not expecting them. It feels heavy a lot of days, but the durability of this song and what it represents keeps me hopeful and content. Great song, great video!
I think nostalgic feelings are associated with something from your own past. For example, I went to a Queen + Adam Lambert concert because queen songs make me super nostalgic for my childhood, and I sat next to am older lady who said she went to all the best concerts in the 80s and 90s and was here reliving that expirience. I wasn't alive in the 80s or 90s, and my nostalgia comes from listening in the early 2000s on roadtrips with my parents. But despite our completely different age groups and nostalgic connections, we were both there singing all the words to the same songs.
Indeed! Maybe it just the topic, but I can cleary see he was invested to make this video. Not that he wasn't in previous videos, but this one was special, y'know?
as someone from just before y2k, a lot of stuff: film cameras, old tracker music, cassettes, etc. gives me "anemoia" as they are things from a past that i feel like i missed out on. or something that was still around, but i was too young to really experience before it faded away.
Honestly, I feel nostalgia whenever I hear boards of canada. I feel like they've mastered the art of making you remember times that never existed through music.
It's this song, literally this is the one that trips my 'nostalgia' bone. DKC2 was I think the second video game I ever played, I was under 10 at the time of DKC2, with DKC1 being the first. It's this song and Aquatic Ambiance that just make me feel good.
"Nostalgia for something that never took place at all." This is and has been Boards Of Canada for me. It has the nostalgia factor from hearing it in my youth, but it always felt like it was nostalgia for a parallel life too. Very weird feeling but it's some of my favorite music of all time. Turquoise Hexagon Sun is a good example of that feeling in their music. I'd love to hear your take on their album Music Has The Right To Children.
For me, Boards of Canada definitely hits a nostalgic chord. It has a lot to do with the particular sounds they use and how they treat them. It always takes me back to my early childhood in the 70's.
This game´s entire soundtrack is golden, My favorite is aquatic ambiance even on top of this one, the song even makes me feel cool temperature on a hot day... nostalgia plus synesthesia.
Thanks for covering this song and Aquatic Ambience in your previous video. Both these songs have so much meaning to me and inspire me. I'm so happy to see you explaining the deep reasons both of these songs are so beautiful!
The Donkey Kong track makes me think of the Daft Punk album Random Access Memories, which also envokes nostalgia for me, for a time I never experienced (the disco era). Cool video!
it doesn’t have to be the arrangement that you recognize - you recognize certain elements of the arrangement, from the timbre to common motifs to any sonic references bramble blast takes me back to when things were simpler, brings me to tears
Probably two effects at play here: 1) Over time, cultural exposure has led us to associate certain sounds with certain environments (e.g. the desert, space), actions, and even feelings. Those sound associations are not inherent across time and space, but they are ubiquitous within a culture group. The DKC soundtracks do a fine job of utilizing this...a track like Aquatic Ambiance will have the same associations now as it did when it was first released. That means any sound generally connected to sadness that is used in a track like this will have its typical (for us) effect. And since nostalgia is a subset of sadness in general, any "sad" sound will have the capacity to create the impression of nostalgia despite not been specifically connected to it. 2) Any media is a product in part of its time, and thus a sound track created in the 1990s will often include aspects (often subtle) that reflect the soundscape of that time. For example, the bops from the SNES Jurassic Park game have some pretty distinct 1990s influences that will lead me to feel a memory-based connection to some similar pop music, even if it's music I never heard at the time. My nostalgia may not be for that given piece of music, but it is for some aspects of it, e.g. tempo of chord use or instrument use or all sorts of other things. Throw in that the specific sound of the SNES itself will reflect wider electronically-produced sounds from the era, and any given person who never heard a note from an actual SNES likely still at some point in the 90s heard a similar sound from a different source...sounds that, if not so common today, will draw a strong connection. So one could easily be nostalgic for aspects of a piece of music despite one never having heard that specific piece itself, and naturally any piece of music that we culturally associate with general sadness can be taken for nostalgia specifically. Put the two together - a sad piece of music from a past era - and you have easy nostalgia for something that to a listener is technically "new".
I think you've put into words pretty much what I was thinking while watching this video and afterwards and didn't know how to express. I think you're right, it's not that the music is making us feel nostalgia per se for something that never happened, but there are different associations between the music and other things from our past, even if they're more subtle or invisible.
i think it must be very subjective, because i didn't feel any anemoia listening to the second song at all, but an example of something that has always given me that feeling since the first time i heard them are the songs in sonic 3's 2-player mode, especially the last 3 (chrome gadget, desert palace, endless mine). i'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't feel that listening to those, and it feels like there are subtle trends to what makes me feel nostalgic, so i have a hunch it has to do with music that influenced a person's taste in their very early years. edit: incidentally, you actually stopped right before the chord progression in stickerbrush symphony that made me personally feel nostalgic! it's possible that there's a grab bag of subconscious techniques for invoking this feeling, and different people react to different parts differently... if that makes any sense ^^;
In this particular sense the combined sense of the Nintendo square synth really adds to this compatibility. Older systems were required to have video games essentially preform music live on the cartridge so using 4 different instruments Nintendo cracked down and helped support the phrase. Limited resources equals infinite creativity. So happy you did a video on DKC aquatic ambiance would be another hard hitter that’s used in pop hear recently too.
I remember back in '95 in middle school playing DKC2 for about an hour when I came across Stickerbrush Symphony, and after dying a couple times because the level is actually difficult, I just let it play for a good 10 minutes. Since then, it's been one of my favorite songs that I come back to a few times a year, pulling out my SNES and game cartridge just to hear it. I was overjoyed when I found out the internet loved it so much, and it is uncanny how so many of us are transported to a time from before, even when some of us never lived it.
any of the minecraft music makes me want to cry 😭 it’s definitely my own nostalgia but some of the minecraft music definitely has that melancholic sound that would make most people feel nostalgic i think
Maybe there's something to be said of the 1-chord (C major) being the "home" of the key, and how the music never neatly resolves back to C major without first passing through the minor chord (A minor) within the progression. You could view this as a sort of analogy of nostalgia. The C chord represents our foundation, or home, or that thing in the past we're trying to get back to. But when we try to revisit that thing in the past, we cannot fully experience it again as it truly was when we first experienced it. We can only remember it through the context of our other memories, which carries a small bit of sadness within it.
Regarding your closing question, it's probably...a bit of both honestly. Music has so much power to set and influence mood intrinsically, and combined with the tendency of melancholia to make people dwell on the past, it's no surprise that tunes like Stickerbush Symphony evoke such strong feelings of nostalgia. The song Thirteen by Big Star still makes me feel super emotional to this day, even though it has been a long time since I was anywhere close to my teens. Please keep the video game music analysis content coming
The fact that I heard Mario Kart 64 Credits music for the absolute first time yesterday and I felt exactly that is crazy. If you never heard it I highly recommend you do, I got instant nostalgia for a game I never actually played
Hah! I knew it was going to be this song immediately. It's a nostalgia bomb to be sure. I enjoyed the game as a kid but it wasn't one of my top titles but the song brings me back a ton. I'd love to see some Bomberman 64 songs talked about as they have a similar feel for me. The songs impact me so much more than from games that I played much more like Mario or Pokemon.
There are a lot of songs that stir deep nostalgia within me. And I think its a mix of the music both being inherently nostalgic, as well as making us dig for memories and times we never experienced. For me personally, nostalgic music both makes me remember the few good memories of the past, as well as long for the life i have never had.
I've been wanting you to make a video on the music of Donkey Kong for so long. Most things by the great composer David Wise are absolutely brilliant. This is probably already my most nostalgic music I know and I hold this series near and dear to my heart.
I just recently described a song the exact same way. "Nostalgic even though I'd never heard it before." The song is Chilly Gonzalez's piano composition "Kenaston". It's also very moody and melancholic. Definitely one worth checking out. After analyzing it a bit further, I realized it's kind of like an adult version of "Heart and Soul". It has the same basic harmonic structure but is simultaneously much more complex. The fact that this song (Heart and Soul) featured so prominently amongst my earliest childhood memories makes perfect sense as to why the Chilly Gonzalez song felt so nostalgic upon first listen.
song by cindy lauoer called girls just want to have fun is another nostalgia song for me. my mom did have red hair, but by the time the video is ending like easily a song that made me cry with nostalgia.
I didn't play the dkc games back then and also have this nostalgic feeling. I can almost smell, taste and feel the memories i had in the 90s when i especially hear the dkc 2 OST.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for times I never lived, and it feels almost like a grief of never being able to experience all that world history had to offer. Like imagine being on set for the filming of a Hollywood classic? Or seeing Ancient Rome in its heyday? Or seeing the pyramids being built? We may have photographs and ruins, but it's just not the same.
the peak of videogame nostalgic music for me has to be the ocarina of time title screen theme, i still remember how strong the feelings hit even when i launched it for the first time, and now enough time has passed for it to start feeling like real nostalgia…
I was born in 1992. I happened to listen to some synthwave music from 2020 and that made some specific childhood memories automatically pop up in my mind. And that's wild because it's 80's like music, and I wasn't even there in the 80s!!
The song (and to a greater extent, the artist) that instantly evokes nostalgia to me is Roygbiv by Boards of Canada. It has this wistful longing that really makes it sound like Saturday morning cartoons. Once the lead synth starts playing (45s in) the phrases begin with playfulness but end on this melancholy call that only gets its response from the start of the next phrase - the song is stuck in a time loop of kid-like wonder through the lens of adult lived experiences.
One of the most nostalgic pieces of music from my childhood is the Lon Lon Ranch theme from Ocarina of Time, it makes me feel incredibly sad too but it's a beautiful piece. Kakariko Village theme and some of the ocarina themes like Bolero of Fire, that game is packed with amazing music. Any music that has a soundscape similar to this game will instantly make me feel the feels
These examples remind me a lot of Vince Guaraldi’s music for the Charlie Brown specials, which also evokes that feeling of childhood. Is that a core memory of our culture that they tap into, or is it just another example?
Woah. I put on Stickerbrush Symphony and was listening to it in my car right when he uploaded the video. Now I see this video in my recommended the next day, lol, that’s crazy I’ve never played DKC nor do I listen to its music; but the song was just stuck in my head all day
Thanks for explaining how this music made me feel even *during the time* I was playing the game as a kid. It already felt nostalgic and I was experiencing it in real time!
I used to play French Horn in band. I picked up other instruments in HS, one being piano. I played but got so frustrated for years so I slowly just… stopped. I found this channel recently a couple months ago and now I find myself ENJOYING when I play. Even if I’m just practicing scales. This channel helped bring back the nostalgia of playing the piano for me. Thank you so much for all you do!
Last summer, one of my childhood best friends came from the city he lived in to the city I lived in and basically stayed in our home for about a month. We were friends since birth, when I was 5, we went to their city (now the city I live in and have for 8 years but we're moving into the city that the rest of the family lives in poggers!!), about a year later they moved out which hurt me very much. But when he came to our house, I watched Nitrorad's video on Star Fox Adventure where he mentioned the PPF cover of the theme (very good cover check it out) and we listened to the cover together and it became our favorite piece of music. I never playerd DKC2, it was already 17 years old when I was born but because I listened to it with my friend for the first time, it just reminds me of last summer where I was with my friend for more than 2 or 3 days since 8 years ago and had fun doing it.
Smells trigger nostalgia the most for me I think. Like there is a certain smell that reminds me of my great grandparents. Im in Japan right now and when I was hiking in the mountains, the smell of wood and moist air was very nostalgic even though I'd never been to Japan before.
Played the game in my childhood. I think that is the only game that I share a feeling of nostalgia with my siblings. They, although loved the game, were not much into games in general, but it is not rare that we remember this music together. I have a strong memory of playing a level with Stickerbush Symphony with all my family getting ready for a family party and my mom saying that this music is beautiful and apreciating my playthrough when brushing my sister's hair. That nostalgic feeling is powerful, and felt quite beyond my remembrance of my family and specially my mom being much younger, it speaks about our family ties beautifully. Something I would like to rescue.
Hi! First of all thank you for the wonderful video, I really love your content! I’m a classical musician and I wanted to share an alternative thought regarding how does this music provoke nostalgia. I am a harmony aficionado and I agree with the remarks on the A minor chord. By the way I think the second species minor seventh and the repeating 9th (b in the melody) on that chord really makes the difference in adding the nostalgia factor. This being said, isn’t all of our musical understanding being constantly shaped by the time we live in? I think that listening and learning about the 80/90s sounds while growing up as children then creates a sense of nostalgia that is referred to actual experiences. As kids we are struck by the awe of a story in the past that, especially in the case of this kind of music, corresponds to an era that is very often romanticized and longed for in general (it happens with the 50/60s as well of course). On the other hand, if we listen to classical music, we experience nostalgia only from the musical elements that were much later used to create the nostalgia feeling: we then learn it from movies, blurred (thus mysterious) interviews and videos, stories and people from that time. Therefore, I don’t think that the nostalgia element is inherent to the music, but that it derives from a series of complex shared memories: our only way to be interested in what came before us is to empathize with the stories that we hear. Additionally, I find that this theory is helped by the current evolution of music in general. In the last 30 years, as knowledge and education became (relatively) more accessible, it feels like we now have a huge palette of colors and emotions that we can pick and immerge ourselves in. I’m sure this process will never end as we are going to be that nostalgia for generations to come. If you don’t mind and you happen to have time, I’d love to know your opinion on this! Thank you
The thing about all of this is: the past is nothing but memories.. Our memories are the only trace of what we've experienced in life.. And that's beautifully sad, just because we can no longer access that feeling.. We're unable to live those memories again because we only live in today's time, that's all we have, and they cannot be in today's time.. And Stickerbush Symphony triggers this sensation very much, as well as Aquatic Ambiance, Life in The Mines (both from DKC, the first title), and many others..
Went to my old school recently. Haven't been there since I graduated 8 years ago. Was mildly nostalgic to put it litely. Had a little bit of sensory overload the first minutes, seeing the kids run around and have fun like I used to. Can't anymore sadly due to medical conditions. Seeing old teachers of mine. And I remembered the friends for life this building gave to me. Was a really odd experience.
I think your point about the different piano sounds explains why lo-fi hip hop works. What it accomplishes for me is very similar. I can put it on and just do other things. It’s like having my own nostalgic soundtrack while I do whatever it is I need to get done. Very similar vibes there
@@bitter-bit Honestly, I'd place DKC2 ~= CT in terms of music. Both of them had fantastic tracks. FF9 (Bermecia, for example), and Chrono Cross are definitely up there as well. Cross is basically a glorified sidequest, but other than the "clown car exiting" main battle theme, all the rest of the music in that game is insanely good, and "Dream of a Shore Bordering Another World" is probably THE most enchanting overworld theme in all of gaming history.
a song that created instant nostalgia for me the moment i heard it is fittingly called "last train home". songs from the 80s will sometimes just have this style that takes me back there, even though i wasn't even born for it.
I've been listening to videogame music more than other kinds all my life, especially since file sharing came into existence. People thought I was weird. But no. I just know good music when I hear it.
I've felt for a long time that music (or any non-linguistic art really) can be understood as a parallel means of communication alongside language, where humans use words to communicate ideas, and music to communicate emotion. This is why the combination of lyrics and music deployed skillfully is so effective at communicating an artist's soul, and also why you can sometimes just almost hear words in an instrumental melody, or a tune in a line of poetry; it's also why we hear monotone speech as "emotionless," and why our vocal tonality fluctuates all over the place when we get emotional. It's an inherent part of how we share our inner selves with others. We experience life through both thoughts and emotions, so most of us instinctively learn how to decipher what people are trying to communicate through these parallel languages. Memories are composed of both ideas (words) and emotions (music) - actually, mostly emotions, neuroscience suggests - so it's reasonable to think that you can communicate your memories just as (or more) effectively with music as you can with words. And people with great skill at communicating their emotions and memories through art are the ones who we perceive as master artists. I would even go so far as to say that the entire basis of whether we find music to be "good" or not rests on whether we hear an emotional message in music that resonates with our own emotional interior - our own literal "inner music" - giving rise to a deep realization that this person is like me, I understand them, and in being understood like this, I am less alone. (And why we can instinctively feel the "soullessness" of AI-generated or corporate-mass-produced art even if it's technically well constructed.) So, when you say we're feeling a nostalgia for a memory that never really existed when we hear something like Stickerbush Symphony, I think that's almost true, but not quite. I think what we're hearing, somehow, is David Wise's memories, communicated nonverbally and perhaps subconsciously, but no less specifically, via his refined compositional skills. There was something inside him that he wanted to let out for others to hear, and I don't know what exactly that was, but somehow, I understand exactly what he meant. For me, that's the real mystery that makes music so fascinating, and why saying music "connects people" isn't just a platitude, it's really a statement of fact. By the way, I also have a theory about how warbly, darkened, distorted music might feel nostalgic because it mimics the process of degradation that our memories of music undergo in our brains' neural storage, causing our mental recollections of music heard long ago to literally "sound" like that as they play back in the region of our brain that processes hearing - but this comment is long enough already. :)
I love how you gave the actual video nostalgic background music. Very meta. And also a very soothing video to watch. To answer your question though, I don't think music can really be inherently nostalgic. Like you said, it draws us towards thinking about memories and feelings of nostalgia. There are songs with completely different vibes than Stickerbrush or Bon Iver that give me nostalgia based on my own experience. However, hearing that plagal cadence always hits me deep. It's just such an emotionally stirring sound.
It's the music, it's our sixth sense, this feeling of melancholy or nostalgia comes from the chord progression, people listen to certain things to rage, cry, smile. As long as you listen, not just hear it, it will make you feel.
As an 80s baby, the resurgence of synthwave has given me major moments of anemoia in recent years. First time I heard Midnight City by M83, and Resonance by Home, they made me long for memories of a life I hadn't lived, yet knew intimately.
Sooooo much meat-on-the-bone in Charles' music analysis videos. They're long and they're in depth. Dude deserves everyone one of his subscribers and views.
There is a line from a TV show that I won't cheapen the line by stating what it is, "sad is happy for deep people" the ethereal dreamlike nature of your happy memories are the sad lie. Your memories are wrong and tempered by your current situation. The sadness part is wanting for days you won't have, and didn't really have, but think back fondly because you want then to have been as good as you remember. Maybe it's my late 90's goth influence at just how powerful sadness can be when embraced, and the closest people accept is nostalgia.
Psychologicaly it is, when you remember a old memory you really don´t remind that certain event but you remember the last time you remembered it. that is why memories can change over time. and i think it fits why similar things can trigger the same feeling of nostalgia. you remember the last time you remembered when you were a kid.
What are some songs that have made you feel nostalgia even though you've never heard it? I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea. Do you think it's inherent in the music or just triggering our own memories? Is it possible to feel nostalgia for something we have no experience with? Would that make it something fundamentally different from nostalgia? I HAVE TO KNOW PLEASE HELP.
Charles, did you cover the theme song from Dexter's Laboratory?
The Piranha Plant Lullaby from Mario 64
Passing Through.
Jungle 1 - Drilling Billy
Queensryche - Silent Lucidity made me feel nostalgic the first time I heard it, and I was sure I hadn't before. It wasn't the sort of thing my parents listened to, and I don't think it was used in any media.
You picked this song Wisely.
I see what you did there.
kekw
That’s a rare pun you made there
ha funny pun
Hehe
It’s not just nostalgia. It’s also melancholy. There’s also sadness of time that passed. That feeling is incredibly strong and to me music cuts right into that emotion.
Melancholy is a part of nostalgia.
There's a wistfulness which is amplified in The Consouls' gorgeous cover which is what I heard first (never played the game)
Mono no aware
Does it have to be sad? Can it be celebratory if fun memories? I’m watching Jomboy Media as they watch through every episode of Nick Guts. It doesn’t bring about nostalgia, but does make me appreciate my childhood memories.
@@doeyjetiege2274that's his point bruh
That song’s truly the *_checkpoint_* of our times…!
I don't get it
Reading the checkpoints every now and then is just..... something. Not fun, not sad, it's a feeling I can't describe.
@@JaysonT1 Search for "internet checkpoints", they are usually associated with the stickerbrush symphony
@@JaysonT1 Theres a video floating around on the internet that people find themselves finding from time to time called the internet checkpoint that often comes with donkey kong country music
Stickerbush Symphony is one of the greatest video game songs of all time. It evokes memories in me that make me wanna cry, but its a happy cry.
Like a "you had a great childhood" cry.
This couldn't have been described any better than this.
More than that, it’s a theme for a beautiful struggle in adulthood
I had such a shit childhood in a lot of ways, but DKC was something that wasn't shit.
I’m 50yo and first heard Stickerbush Symphony about 5 years ago. This, Aquatic Ambience, music from Undertale, Outer Wilds, Florence, Ori, Gris, Hollow Knight, Final Fantasy, Xenoblade, Stardew Valley… so much more… incredible music that brings tears to my eyes. Love your take on this. Great vid.
Aquatic Ambience is transcendent. VGM is such an incredible genre of music, it’s almost all I listen to now
This song really DOES take me back to my childhood because it's the very first song I became conscious of actually loving. I paused the game for what felt like an hour to just sit there and listen instead of playing the level right away. It was one of the most serene moments in my life, probably the first of few truly zen moments where I felt at peace and everything was perfect. I was in the moment and dialed in.
Smart on the developers to not pause the music when you paused the game. I had the same reaction to that song.
My brother passed away seven years ago and we spent so much of our childhood playing DKC2. This was his favorite song and he wrote me a letter in his adulthood and mentioned that he would load this song and listen to it and cry
@@sarahnavey Wow...thanks for sharing that with me. May he rest in peace.
@@TheSinlessAssassin of course; I just love that this song has a quality that made people playing the game just pause and enjoy the music, and that it evoked the same feeling in so many of us
@@sarahnavey me too. As a pretty isolated kid growing up, it’s nice to look back and realize I wasn’t alone in that first ever truly zen moment of my life. If this song meant the same to your brother and he himself meant a lot to you, it adds even more significance to this song.
Stickerbush Symphony is something F-ing magical.
I can still remember playing DKC2 being almost a teenager and getting through almost all of the game, just enjoying my time playing Diddy and Dixie Kong... to then start up the level called Bramble Scramble, thinking "Ok, next level", to then be hit by this masterpiece.
It felt like doing the ice bucket challenge, but the icy water was a warm blanket. It stopped me dead in my tracks having walked left for like a second, making me literally put down my controller after a few seconds staring slack-jawed at the screen, taking in all the harmonies and sounds Stickerbush Symphony threw at me.
It might be one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
i think FM synthesis, in general, is really nostalgia inducing for a lot of people. it has a timbral quality that reminds us of both video game music, and pop from the early 80's through the 90's, which is why it is commonly used in "nostalgic" genres like vaprowave.
Agreed, though I don't think this music used FM synthesis since the SNES sound hardware was sample based
@d34thby1337 if I recall correctly, I believe the SPC700 sound chip in the SNES is capable of FM synthesis, but I think you're right that most sounds on the console we're produced using samples. Either way, I believe the soundtrack to the SNES DK games were composed on a DX-7, and presumably this is also how the samples were generated.
@d34thby1337 ah nevermind, just did some more research and i don't think the DX-7 was primarily used, although many other games did use it.
Wavestation was one of the main keyboards sampled for the game
And NOW I'm crying profusely at work, this is my alltime favorite song. THANK YOU
There might also be an element of _saudade_ to this. That's a combination of a sadness for what you had and no longer have (usually a lived experience with someone who is no longer alive), mixed with not just happiness [for having had those experiences with that person], but also punctuated with the realization that you'll never again experience those feelings [with that person].
I don't know if any of the branches of the study of human history will ever be able to explain what exactly are the elements of both music and our brain chemistry that make it so that music (out of all other branches of art) tugs the most at our heartstrings, but I doubt that we'll ever stop trying to solve this most profound, intriguing and exclusively human puzzle!
The explanation/theory might be weirdly straightforward 🙂
Music is sound, vibration and frequency.
These things are by all means, physics.
Water is a very modular substance
Human bodies contain an awful lot of water in all major areas
Our cells are literally being pushed around in our body, when the music has resonance for us
Stickerbrush Symphony is easily one of the best pieces of music ever written. Chills EVERY time
There is a lot of elegant melancholy to be found in the soundtracks of DKC 1 and 2 - and the feeling of melancholy is like a single half-step away from nostalgia already.
Of course, that feeling is like ten times stronger for those of us who can tie the music to our childhoods.
Internet checkpoint song! For the uninitiated, there was a video on youtube a while ago with a japanese(?) title that was recommended to a lot of people, and it became the “internet checkpoint”. Nintendo eventually took it down (of course), and since it has been reuploaded by others. I miss the original, but i’m glad that there’s new videos keeping up the memory.
Do you have a link to those other videos?
Just search internet checkpoint @@NueThunderKing
There’s a sequel.
@@NueThunderKing Thats the thing, it either doesn't have a title, or it's in japanese characters, so either way you can't search for it. It has to find you.
My wife and I both grew up liking different things. She LOVED (and still loves) Pokémon and Legend of Zelda games. I was more into Star Wars and old-school Disney movies and MGM musicals. I also played loads of Nintendo, but not a whole lot of Legend of Zelda or Pokémon.
We have a playlist that we compiled and play whenever we have a chill day at home or cooking dinner together, and it's full of orchestral renditions of our childhoods.
Like I said, I didn't play a whole lot of Pokémon or Legend of Zelda - but any time selections from those games come on, I'm transported to when I would sit in my room and play Super Mario 64, or when I would take summer trips to Disneyland with my family.
Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
Amazing timing, I had this SAME experience with Stickerbrush Symphony just two days ago, and have been listening to it over and over and over since then.
Im so glad you covered this song! It felt nostalgic in the 90s too! Its always been my favorite in the game. Such a classic
Smashing Pumpkins' 1979 is nostalgia encapsulated in music, making me feel nostalgic about something that I don't even know what.
along with today for sure
It's the part when the guitar riff reverbs in a way that sounds like street traffic, where it almost sounds out of tune. Makes the song seem dreamy or ephemeral.
Yes finally someone else feels the same
Great song! Check out the contortionist cover of it too - it's super faithful but really beautiful and special
SP's 1979 always the America's (the band) Venture spiritual succesor song for me.
The song that started my love of music to begin with
The Super Nintendo was the first console to have a dedicated sound DSP back then and it was truly a revelation compared to the Genesis/ MegaDrive, many arcade machines and even home computers like the Amiga or the first Macs. I remember letting my characters idle in many games just to listen to the music and the DK titles were particularly good. As a 3D artist I also couldn't get enough of the rich CG backgrounds and characters.
Not exactly the same but for GTA VICE CITY I would steal cars are just drive around to listen to the radio.
Why do I feel like Minecraft have this feeling as well
if you played it in your childhood then you can't really consider it to be anemoia, but nostalgia absolutely
The minecraft soundtrack for certain has that nostalgia / melancholy for days past vibes without me having it played as a child, as the game came out when i had like 20
I immediately thought of minecraft's sweden
Dungeon Synth is a entire genre based on this feeling
Because it’s a escape game. It’s real life!!!
The comment about playing this game before going off to their grandmother's for Christmas almost put me to tears... that comment really brought me back because the Donkey Kong series was a beloved series that my stepmom and I played a lot... and it was mostly special around Christmas-time. Upon hearing this, I got some serious literal goosebumps. It's special music like this that will continue to captivate for generations to come.
This song was playing in my head on repeat when my wife was in labor with our first son and while I was holding him for the first time. It was so random, but also beautiful. When I listen to Stickerbrush Symphony now, I'm not only taken back to a time when I was a kid playing DKC2 on Super Nintendo, but also back to my son's birth. It's my favorite song and I cry the happiest tears when it plays❤️
I was able to look up Stickerbrush Symphony on Chordify and noticed that it has a hidden Royal Road chord movement. (F>G>Em>Am on C Major). Here, the G major chord is resolving onto a chord that is different from either C or Am. The second thing that I noticed is that the C tonic chord is hardly touched. As David Bennett pointed out, the Royal Road progression is supposed to add a touch of wistfulness to the major scale.
i'm in my house but i want to go home
-not mine
nostalgia and anemoia have to be the some of the best feelings and the latter is one of my favorite words, so glad you talked about it because as soon as you started talking about nostalgia from games and music that we haven't experienced, i immediately remembered that word, so rare yet so beautiful
The home I want to go to was in 1992, with my siblings annoying me, and my dad was still alive, though grumpy. That was a really good year for me.
I do still go visit my Mom who lives in that same house, but it's awfully empty now, even though my little sister is back there for a bit.
Sound waves have the ability to move matter. To assume that sound doesn't move matter in a way in our body that affects our mood would be bold. I think if studied enough, you'd find sound will make certain elements/molecules behave in different ways due to changing shape alone, not to mention undiscovered phenomena. Our ears are right next to all of these neurotransmitters, I would like to think they have a certain interaction on some level.
Checkpoints pop up even when you’re not expecting them. It feels heavy a lot of days, but the durability of this song and what it represents keeps me hopeful and content. Great song, great video!
I think nostalgic feelings are associated with something from your own past. For example, I went to a Queen + Adam Lambert concert because queen songs make me super nostalgic for my childhood, and I sat next to am older lady who said she went to all the best concerts in the 80s and 90s and was here reliving that expirience. I wasn't alive in the 80s or 90s, and my nostalgia comes from listening in the early 2000s on roadtrips with my parents. But despite our completely different age groups and nostalgic connections, we were both there singing all the words to the same songs.
That's so heart-warming - music unites across tine, space and culture 💖
This is one of the best videos you ever put out.
Indeed! Maybe it just the topic, but I can cleary see he was invested to make this video. Not that he wasn't in previous videos, but this one was special, y'know?
the track "Silent Light" from Chrono Trigger hits my nostalgia button too even though I never played it
"To Far Away Times" is still a chilling/touching bop, too!"
as someone from just before y2k, a lot of stuff: film cameras, old tracker music, cassettes, etc. gives me "anemoia" as they are things from a past that i feel like i missed out on.
or something that was still around, but i was too young to really experience before it faded away.
Honestly, I feel nostalgia whenever I hear boards of canada. I feel like they've mastered the art of making you remember times that never existed through music.
That song was perfect for those stages, it calmed you down for those frustrating stages.
I was there... I remember being awed by this game. The graphics were amazing for its time, and the music was enchanting as well.
It's this song, literally this is the one that trips my 'nostalgia' bone. DKC2 was I think the second video game I ever played, I was under 10 at the time of DKC2, with DKC1 being the first. It's this song and Aquatic Ambiance that just make me feel good.
"Nostalgia for something that never took place at all."
This is and has been Boards Of Canada for me. It has the nostalgia factor from hearing it in my youth, but it always felt like it was nostalgia for a parallel life too. Very weird feeling but it's some of my favorite music of all time. Turquoise Hexagon Sun is a good example of that feeling in their music. I'd love to hear your take on their album Music Has The Right To Children.
For me, Boards of Canada definitely hits a nostalgic chord. It has a lot to do with the particular sounds they use and how they treat them. It always takes me back to my early childhood in the 70's.
This song felt nostalgic back when i first played dkc2. Most of the songs on both dkc1 and 2 osts have a melancholy feel but 2 was particularly strong
This game´s entire soundtrack is golden, My favorite is aquatic ambiance even on top of this one, the song even makes me feel cool temperature on a hot day... nostalgia plus synesthesia.
Thanks for covering this song and Aquatic Ambience in your previous video. Both these songs have so much meaning to me and inspire me. I'm so happy to see you explaining the deep reasons both of these songs are so beautiful!
A very subtle component to songs I've recognized as 'nostalgic' - slight detuning in harmony.
The Donkey Kong track makes me think of the Daft Punk album Random Access Memories, which also envokes nostalgia for me, for a time I never experienced (the disco era). Cool video!
Random Access Memories blends a past era with a current era; it’s a true masterpiece
it doesn’t have to be the arrangement that you recognize - you recognize certain elements of the arrangement, from the timbre to common motifs to any sonic references
bramble blast takes me back to when things were simpler, brings me to tears
The Bon Iver shoutout was not expected but definitely welcomed. He’s the goat.
Probably two effects at play here:
1) Over time, cultural exposure has led us to associate certain sounds with certain environments (e.g. the desert, space), actions, and even feelings. Those sound associations are not inherent across time and space, but they are ubiquitous within a culture group. The DKC soundtracks do a fine job of utilizing this...a track like Aquatic Ambiance will have the same associations now as it did when it was first released. That means any sound generally connected to sadness that is used in a track like this will have its typical (for us) effect. And since nostalgia is a subset of sadness in general, any "sad" sound will have the capacity to create the impression of nostalgia despite not been specifically connected to it.
2) Any media is a product in part of its time, and thus a sound track created in the 1990s will often include aspects (often subtle) that reflect the soundscape of that time. For example, the bops from the SNES Jurassic Park game have some pretty distinct 1990s influences that will lead me to feel a memory-based connection to some similar pop music, even if it's music I never heard at the time. My nostalgia may not be for that given piece of music, but it is for some aspects of it, e.g. tempo of chord use or instrument use or all sorts of other things. Throw in that the specific sound of the SNES itself will reflect wider electronically-produced sounds from the era, and any given person who never heard a note from an actual SNES likely still at some point in the 90s heard a similar sound from a different source...sounds that, if not so common today, will draw a strong connection.
So one could easily be nostalgic for aspects of a piece of music despite one never having heard that specific piece itself, and naturally any piece of music that we culturally associate with general sadness can be taken for nostalgia specifically. Put the two together - a sad piece of music from a past era - and you have easy nostalgia for something that to a listener is technically "new".
Great comment!
I think you've put into words pretty much what I was thinking while watching this video and afterwards and didn't know how to express. I think you're right, it's not that the music is making us feel nostalgia per se for something that never happened, but there are different associations between the music and other things from our past, even if they're more subtle or invisible.
Yeah, this song is beautiful
ahh yes, the life-changing experience of discovering Stickerbush Symphony for yourself
This song brings back memories because a version of it is featured in a certain level of the SSB Brawl story mode
just found this channel. I swear listening to when you cover video game tracks, and you blend them in gives me goosebumps. I love the passion
i think it must be very subjective, because i didn't feel any anemoia listening to the second song at all, but an example of something that has always given me that feeling since the first time i heard them are the songs in sonic 3's 2-player mode, especially the last 3 (chrome gadget, desert palace, endless mine). i'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't feel that listening to those, and it feels like there are subtle trends to what makes me feel nostalgic, so i have a hunch it has to do with music that influenced a person's taste in their very early years.
edit: incidentally, you actually stopped right before the chord progression in stickerbrush symphony that made me personally feel nostalgic! it's possible that there's a grab bag of subconscious techniques for invoking this feeling, and different people react to different parts differently... if that makes any sense ^^;
In this particular sense the combined sense of the Nintendo square synth really adds to this compatibility. Older systems were required to have video games essentially preform music live on the cartridge so using 4 different instruments Nintendo cracked down and helped support the phrase. Limited resources equals infinite creativity. So happy you did a video on DKC aquatic ambiance would be another hard hitter that’s used in pop hear recently too.
I remember back in '95 in middle school playing DKC2 for about an hour when I came across Stickerbrush Symphony, and after dying a couple times because the level is actually difficult, I just let it play for a good 10 minutes. Since then, it's been one of my favorite songs that I come back to a few times a year, pulling out my SNES and game cartridge just to hear it. I was overjoyed when I found out the internet loved it so much, and it is uncanny how so many of us are transported to a time from before, even when some of us never lived it.
any of the minecraft music makes me want to cry 😭 it’s definitely my own nostalgia but some of the minecraft music definitely has that melancholic sound that would make most people feel nostalgic i think
Maybe there's something to be said of the 1-chord (C major) being the "home" of the key, and how the music never neatly resolves back to C major without first passing through the minor chord (A minor) within the progression. You could view this as a sort of analogy of nostalgia. The C chord represents our foundation, or home, or that thing in the past we're trying to get back to. But when we try to revisit that thing in the past, we cannot fully experience it again as it truly was when we first experienced it. We can only remember it through the context of our other memories, which carries a small bit of sadness within it.
Regarding your closing question, it's probably...a bit of both honestly. Music has so much power to set and influence mood intrinsically, and combined with the tendency of melancholia to make people dwell on the past, it's no surprise that tunes like Stickerbush Symphony evoke such strong feelings of nostalgia. The song Thirteen by Big Star still makes me feel super emotional to this day, even though it has been a long time since I was anywhere close to my teens. Please keep the video game music analysis content coming
The fact that I heard Mario Kart 64 Credits music for the absolute first time yesterday and I felt exactly that is crazy. If you never heard it I highly recommend you do, I got instant nostalgia for a game I never actually played
Hah! I knew it was going to be this song immediately.
It's a nostalgia bomb to be sure. I enjoyed the game as a kid but it wasn't one of my top titles but the song brings me back a ton.
I'd love to see some Bomberman 64 songs talked about as they have a similar feel for me. The songs impact me so much more than from games that I played much more like Mario or Pokemon.
There are a lot of songs that stir deep nostalgia within me. And I think its a mix of the music both being inherently nostalgic, as well as making us dig for memories and times we never experienced. For me personally, nostalgic music both makes me remember the few good memories of the past, as well as long for the life i have never had.
I've been wanting you to make a video on the music of Donkey Kong for so long. Most things by the great composer David Wise are absolutely brilliant. This is probably already my most nostalgic music I know and I hold this series near and dear to my heart.
I just recently described a song the exact same way. "Nostalgic even though I'd never heard it before." The song is Chilly Gonzalez's piano composition "Kenaston". It's also very moody and melancholic. Definitely one worth checking out. After analyzing it a bit further, I realized it's kind of like an adult version of "Heart and Soul". It has the same basic harmonic structure but is simultaneously much more complex. The fact that this song (Heart and Soul) featured so prominently amongst my earliest childhood memories makes perfect sense as to why the Chilly Gonzalez song felt so nostalgic upon first listen.
song by cindy lauoer called girls just want to have fun is another nostalgia song for me. my mom did have red hair, but by the time the video is ending like easily a song that made me cry with nostalgia.
I didn't play the dkc games back then and also have this nostalgic feeling. I can almost smell, taste and feel the memories i had in the 90s when i especially hear the dkc 2 OST.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for times I never lived, and it feels almost like a grief of never being able to experience all that world history had to offer. Like imagine being on set for the filming of a Hollywood classic? Or seeing Ancient Rome in its heyday? Or seeing the pyramids being built? We may have photographs and ruins, but it's just not the same.
This is one of my all time favorite pieces of music from any video game; quite literally every time I listen to this melodic masterpiece, I get chills
14:40 The normal piano sounds like a normal piano.
The mellow version sounds like distant echoes of the past.
the peak of videogame nostalgic music for me has to be the ocarina of time title screen theme, i still remember how strong the feelings hit even when i launched it for the first time, and now enough time has passed for it to start feeling like real nostalgia…
I was born in 1992. I happened to listen to some synthwave music from 2020 and that made some specific childhood memories automatically pop up in my mind. And that's wild because it's 80's like music, and I wasn't even there in the 80s!!
Trance 009 sound system dreamscape gives me RUclips nostalgia. The "you wouldn't steal a car" psa music gives me early 2000s cinema nostalgia
The song (and to a greater extent, the artist) that instantly evokes nostalgia to me is Roygbiv by Boards of Canada. It has this wistful longing that really makes it sound like Saturday morning cartoons. Once the lead synth starts playing (45s in) the phrases begin with playfulness but end on this melancholy call that only gets its response from the start of the next phrase - the song is stuck in a time loop of kid-like wonder through the lens of adult lived experiences.
One of the most nostalgic pieces of music from my childhood is the Lon Lon Ranch theme from Ocarina of Time, it makes me feel incredibly sad too but it's a beautiful piece.
Kakariko Village theme and some of the ocarina themes like Bolero of Fire, that game is packed with amazing music. Any music that has a soundscape similar to this game will instantly make me feel the feels
These examples remind me a lot of Vince Guaraldi’s music for the Charlie Brown specials, which also evokes that feeling of childhood. Is that a core memory of our culture that they tap into, or is it just another example?
1:35 sounds a bit like “Time after time”’which is also a very nostalgia inducing song.
Woah. I put on Stickerbrush Symphony and was listening to it in my car right when he uploaded the video. Now I see this video in my recommended the next day, lol, that’s crazy
I’ve never played DKC nor do I listen to its music; but the song was just stuck in my head all day
Thanks for explaining how this music made me feel even *during the time* I was playing the game as a kid. It already felt nostalgic and I was experiencing it in real time!
I used to play French Horn in band. I picked up other instruments in HS, one being piano. I played but got so frustrated for years so I slowly just… stopped. I found this channel recently a couple months ago and now I find myself ENJOYING when I play. Even if I’m just practicing scales. This channel helped bring back the nostalgia of playing the piano for me. Thank you so much for all you do!
Last summer, one of my childhood best friends came from the city he lived in to the city I lived in and basically stayed in our home for about a month. We were friends since birth, when I was 5, we went to their city (now the city I live in and have for 8 years but we're moving into the city that the rest of the family lives in poggers!!), about a year later they moved out which hurt me very much. But when he came to our house, I watched Nitrorad's video on Star Fox Adventure where he mentioned the PPF cover of the theme (very good cover check it out) and we listened to the cover together and it became our favorite piece of music. I never playerd DKC2, it was already 17 years old when I was born but because I listened to it with my friend for the first time, it just reminds me of last summer where I was with my friend for more than 2 or 3 days since 8 years ago and had fun doing it.
Smells trigger nostalgia the most for me I think. Like there is a certain smell that reminds me of my great grandparents. Im in Japan right now and when I was hiking in the mountains, the smell of wood and moist air was very nostalgic even though I'd never been to Japan before.
Played the game in my childhood. I think that is the only game that I share a feeling of nostalgia with my siblings. They, although loved the game, were not much into games in general, but it is not rare that we remember this music together. I have a strong memory of playing a level with Stickerbush Symphony with all my family getting ready for a family party and my mom saying that this music is beautiful and apreciating my playthrough when brushing my sister's hair. That nostalgic feeling is powerful, and felt quite beyond my remembrance of my family and specially my mom being much younger, it speaks about our family ties beautifully. Something I would like to rescue.
The whole OST of that game is INCREDIBLE and hits right in the feels. God it takes me back
I'm so happy to see this channel keep on spreading love for video game music
Hi! First of all thank you for the wonderful video, I really love your content! I’m a classical musician and I wanted to share an alternative thought regarding how does this music provoke nostalgia. I am a harmony aficionado and I agree with the remarks on the A minor chord. By the way I think the second species minor seventh and the repeating 9th (b in the melody) on that chord really makes the difference in adding the nostalgia factor. This being said, isn’t all of our musical understanding being constantly shaped by the time we live in? I think that listening and learning about the 80/90s sounds while growing up as children then creates a sense of nostalgia that is referred to actual experiences. As kids we are struck by the awe of a story in the past that, especially in the case of this kind of music, corresponds to an era that is very often romanticized and longed for in general (it happens with the 50/60s as well of course). On the other hand, if we listen to classical music, we experience nostalgia only from the musical elements that were much later used to create the nostalgia feeling: we then learn it from movies, blurred (thus mysterious) interviews and videos, stories and people from that time. Therefore, I don’t think that the nostalgia element is inherent to the music, but that it derives from a series of complex shared memories: our only way to be interested in what came before us is to empathize with the stories that we hear. Additionally, I find that this theory is helped by the current evolution of music in general. In the last 30 years, as knowledge and education became (relatively) more accessible, it feels like we now have a huge palette of colors and emotions that we can pick and immerge ourselves in. I’m sure this process will never end as we are going to be that nostalgia for generations to come. If you don’t mind and you happen to have time, I’d love to know your opinion on this! Thank you
The thing about all of this is: the past is nothing but memories.. Our memories are the only trace of what we've experienced in life.. And that's beautifully sad, just because we can no longer access that feeling.. We're unable to live those memories again because we only live in today's time, that's all we have, and they cannot be in today's time..
And Stickerbush Symphony triggers this sensation very much, as well as Aquatic Ambiance, Life in The Mines (both from DKC, the first title), and many others..
This feels like a successor to 'Aquatic Ambience' from the first game. Beautiful track.
Went to my old school recently. Haven't been there since I graduated 8 years ago. Was mildly nostalgic to put it litely. Had a little bit of sensory overload the first minutes, seeing the kids run around and have fun like I used to. Can't anymore sadly due to medical conditions. Seeing old teachers of mine. And I remembered the friends for life this building gave to me. Was a really odd experience.
One music that always gives me this vibe is Lady, by Modjo.
An absolute banger!!
What if I told you that... Josie's on a vacation far away?
I think your point about the different piano sounds explains why lo-fi hip hop works. What it accomplishes for me is very similar. I can put it on and just do other things. It’s like having my own nostalgic soundtrack while I do whatever it is I need to get done. Very similar vibes there
I love your passion 👍🫵
Stickerbrush symphony is hands down the best music in all of videogames.
You say that when all of Chrono Trigger is right there
@@bitter-bit Honestly, I'd place DKC2 ~= CT in terms of music. Both of them had fantastic tracks. FF9 (Bermecia, for example), and Chrono Cross are definitely up there as well. Cross is basically a glorified sidequest, but other than the "clown car exiting" main battle theme, all the rest of the music in that game is insanely good, and "Dream of a Shore Bordering Another World" is probably THE most enchanting overworld theme in all of gaming history.
a song that created instant nostalgia for me the moment i heard it is fittingly called "last train home". songs from the 80s will sometimes just have this style that takes me back there, even though i wasn't even born for it.
I've been listening to videogame music more than other kinds all my life, especially since file sharing came into existence. People thought I was weird. But no. I just know good music when I hear it.
God I love how passionate you are about this
I've felt for a long time that music (or any non-linguistic art really) can be understood as a parallel means of communication alongside language, where humans use words to communicate ideas, and music to communicate emotion. This is why the combination of lyrics and music deployed skillfully is so effective at communicating an artist's soul, and also why you can sometimes just almost hear words in an instrumental melody, or a tune in a line of poetry; it's also why we hear monotone speech as "emotionless," and why our vocal tonality fluctuates all over the place when we get emotional. It's an inherent part of how we share our inner selves with others. We experience life through both thoughts and emotions, so most of us instinctively learn how to decipher what people are trying to communicate through these parallel languages.
Memories are composed of both ideas (words) and emotions (music) - actually, mostly emotions, neuroscience suggests - so it's reasonable to think that you can communicate your memories just as (or more) effectively with music as you can with words. And people with great skill at communicating their emotions and memories through art are the ones who we perceive as master artists. I would even go so far as to say that the entire basis of whether we find music to be "good" or not rests on whether we hear an emotional message in music that resonates with our own emotional interior - our own literal "inner music" - giving rise to a deep realization that this person is like me, I understand them, and in being understood like this, I am less alone. (And why we can instinctively feel the "soullessness" of AI-generated or corporate-mass-produced art even if it's technically well constructed.)
So, when you say we're feeling a nostalgia for a memory that never really existed when we hear something like Stickerbush Symphony, I think that's almost true, but not quite. I think what we're hearing, somehow, is David Wise's memories, communicated nonverbally and perhaps subconsciously, but no less specifically, via his refined compositional skills. There was something inside him that he wanted to let out for others to hear, and I don't know what exactly that was, but somehow, I understand exactly what he meant. For me, that's the real mystery that makes music so fascinating, and why saying music "connects people" isn't just a platitude, it's really a statement of fact.
By the way, I also have a theory about how warbly, darkened, distorted music might feel nostalgic because it mimics the process of degradation that our memories of music undergo in our brains' neural storage, causing our mental recollections of music heard long ago to literally "sound" like that as they play back in the region of our brain that processes hearing - but this comment is long enough already. :)
I think having a rhythm or motif that keeps repeating through the song is a big deal too. It puts me in a reflective mood if it’s not boring.
I love how you gave the actual video nostalgic background music. Very meta. And also a very soothing video to watch. To answer your question though, I don't think music can really be inherently nostalgic. Like you said, it draws us towards thinking about memories and feelings of nostalgia. There are songs with completely different vibes than Stickerbrush or Bon Iver that give me nostalgia based on my own experience. However, hearing that plagal cadence always hits me deep. It's just such an emotionally stirring sound.
It's the music, it's our sixth sense, this feeling of melancholy or nostalgia comes from the chord progression, people listen to certain things to rage, cry, smile. As long as you listen, not just hear it, it will make you feel.
As an 80s baby, the resurgence of synthwave has given me major moments of anemoia in recent years. First time I heard Midnight City by M83, and Resonance by Home, they made me long for memories of a life I hadn't lived, yet knew intimately.
Sooooo much meat-on-the-bone in Charles' music analysis videos. They're long and they're in depth. Dude deserves everyone one of his subscribers and views.
I think you should make a video about tom brier and how he improvised all the video game music when he was sight-reading it
There is a line from a TV show that I won't cheapen the line by stating what it is, "sad is happy for deep people" the ethereal dreamlike nature of your happy memories are the sad lie. Your memories are wrong and tempered by your current situation. The sadness part is wanting for days you won't have, and didn't really have, but think back fondly because you want then to have been as good as you remember. Maybe it's my late 90's goth influence at just how powerful sadness can be when embraced, and the closest people accept is nostalgia.
Fyi to answer your question I agree it's the feeling of happy and sad mixed that inspire.
Psychologicaly it is, when you remember a old memory you really don´t remind that certain event but you remember the last time you remembered it. that is why memories can change over time. and i think it fits why similar things can trigger the same feeling of nostalgia. you remember the last time you remembered when you were a kid.