What year is it again? While Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” is number 1, and Justin Bieber is in the top 10, the iTunes chart continues to be rife with Oldies. Oldies!
It’s comfort food for the pandemic, I guess.
On the iTunes Top 20, 8 of the entries are oldies but goodies. They include Norman Greenbaum’s unintentionally spiritual “Spirit in the Sky” from 1970 and the Cranberries’ “Zombie” from 1994. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” a song with with 9 lives, is number 4. The late 70s hit already had a massive run on the charts last year after going viral from a fan video. “Dreams” won’t go away.
There are FOUR other Fleetwood Mac singles in the top 100. Not to mention Stevie Nicks, who wrote “Dreams” sang lead on it for the Mac. Her solo hit, “Edge of Seventeen,” is also in the top 20.
Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ’69,” a hit in 1984, is also there. Just FYI, Adams was only 9 years old in the Summer of 1969. The song is fiction. The rest of the top 100 is littered with oldies, including past hit records by Bon Jovi, U2, Chicago, Nickelback, Simple Minds, Heart, and Tina Turner.
Is this a surge of nostalgia? Or an indictment of current music? Or just a lack of current music with artists and labels holding back new music until the pandemic is over?