Why bring something back if you’re not going to do it properly? Chloe Rowe delves into the trance and clubland music of the 90s and 00s and why it should stay in the past, where it belongs
The roof is down and my black tufty mohawk is flapping in the wind. It is the summer of 2001. Castles in the Sky by Ian Van Dahl is blasting out of the car speakers, and life is beautiful. Or so I’m told.
I was only a few months old, so this memory is not mine, but my mother’s. But it has been told so frequently, as reminiscent mothers tend to do, that it is vivid in my mind.
Going out for drives was something my parents loved to do, and of course I was along for the ride. But the soundtrack to these drives, and for the rest of my youth, was the trance, dance and club classics of the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Artists and DJs like Darude, Lange, Signum, Lost Witness and Paul Oakenfold to name a few, were so ingrained into my life that I still listen to them today.
And these songs had died. The genre wasn’t popular anymore and the club lifestyle disintegrated. A fact that my mum had been very disappointed with. She was stuck with playing the same Clubland Classix CDs in the car over and over again. Though she never did get sick of them, she still plays them to this day.
But, thanks to nostalgia and trends constantly recycling. The dance anthems are back! But are they any good?
I’m afraid the answer is no.
The songs that are coming out now are just the songs of the past but regurgitated with some extra lyrics on top, and maybe a bit of rap mixed in.
They’re taking what was good and making it bad. And people swallow it up because it’s nostalgic. But I won’t do it. I wasn’t involved in the lifestyle enough to be so desperate to get the songs back.
Unfortunately, my mum has, however, been enjoying the game of ‘guess which song this sounds like from your past’, and celebrating when she gets it right. So, she and I’m sure others are excited about these new remixes that shout out to the good old days. But I won’t fall for it.
A prime example of this destruction of a good genre is the 1995 song Children by Robert Miles. It’s a euphoric song that feels techy and dramatic and light. It’s a complex song, with no lyrics, it solely relies on the sound and the build-up and it’s wonderful.
The 2023 song REACT by Switch Disco featuring Ella Henderson and Robert Miles is a remake of this. It takes the track, adds a basic beat, some lyrics about love and voila! It has turned into overcomplicated modern mush.
The great thing about the classics is that they’re simple, they have no wishy-washy lyrics (though if they do have lyrics, they’re simple or cheesy in the best way). The focus is sound, build-up, drop, and rhythm, they are perfect the way they are.
But now they’re just an annoyance on the radio. They’re over-done, over-played, and I’m over it. The day when songs become original again, and stop being remixed, is the day I will be happy.
Until then, I will continue to listen to the originals, and I will be awaiting the day when they leave the past alone and make something new. My mum, however, will be enjoying both, because she’s a sucker for nostalgia and she doesn’t care. So good for her, I guess.
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