We’ve all heard it: ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to.’
It’s a sentiment as old as, ironically, time. How times have changed for the worse, how quality has dipped, the commodification and enshittification of damn near everything. In some ways it’s true, but in so many others, it’s a lie we tell ourselves. You hear it more often than not in reference to music; complaining about the stars, about the inclusion of more and more technology into songcraft, the population of charts and sales certification. Whether the ‘cream’ truly does rise to the top, as we have been told to believe.
Not universally, but generally, it’s not true. If you put the toil in, you can and will find valuable, worthwhile music being released every single week. Across the globe, musicians and artists have more access to disseminating their work than ever before. Where you once had to drive to a seedy part of town and pay a guy who smelt like stale liquor to record your demo, now you can open up an app on your laptop. The sound of every known instrument can be recreated and manipulated digitally. You can upload your creations to countless streaming platforms all over the internet for intrepid diggers to find. There is quite literally more music coming out in an average week, the world over, than ever before. And yet, if you were to ask the average person what their favourite album is, or what piece of music they hold dearest in their heart, chances are it’s not going to have come out in the last year. And so it begs the question:
Why do we love the classics so much?
Someone much smarter than this writer (preferably with a degree in ethnomusicology and/or psychology) could answer this question far more soundly than I, but I’ll take a crack at it nonetheless. My qualifications? I listen to a lot of music (I also manage a record store). Every week, we receive brand new albums that have yet to wash over fresh ears, and reissues of beloved classics that either needed to be dusted off or given the exposure they deserve. And in peddling these fine wares — some that have sold millions of copies world-wide, some that were overlooked and never given their due — you start to notice a couple of things.
The first, and most glaring: Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Each of us finds ourselves, frequently and consistently, no doubt, returning to past, simpler times, yore, the good ol’ days. Our lives are, in so many uncalculable facets, dictated by a subconscious yearning for simpler times. The proverbial ‘Golden Ages’ on which we wistfully reminisce are always in the rearview, never on the horizon (unless, of course, you’re a fictional comic book villain bent on world domination and bringing in a utopian society built in your own image, which, odds are, you aren’t). Memory is a handshake between fact and fiction. The world created by our recollection has a funny way of blocking out the cons and bathing the pros in a golden effervescent radiance. We make the past feel safe because, despite what is objectively true — and that doesn’t even mean, per se, what fits flush with the annals of record — that’s how we want to remember it best. It’s basic psychology. Your Golden Age may be in 1962, headlined by the Beach Boysdebut Surfin’ Safari, or the early days of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (conveniently leaving out the Cuban Missile Crisis). It could be the mid-80s, when Prince reigned supreme, the rise of electronic music equipment like drum machines and synthesizers ushered in a groundswell of opportunities for musicians that didn’t play traditional instruments, which threw the music industry into a sort of philosophical upheaval.
The second thing you notice is that nostalgia is contagious. You yourself could even be sentimental about a period when you weren’t alive; when flower crowns were en vogue, when it was customary to drink scotch at the office, when the Saskatchewan Roughriders sustained a dynasty. “Sweet Caroline” came out in 1969, but on an average weekend on 17th Ave, you can hear “Ba-Ba-Ba”’s from voices in half a century’s range. Revivalism and homage are integral parts of our musical ecosystem, and gimmicky as it can be, it broadens our experience and refreshes our spirits. Kids will always be interested in the music their parents listened to, even if their musical literacy doesn’t necessarily depend on it. At 16 Joey Bada$$ carved out a career predicated on the timelessness of New York Boom Bap hip hop, nodding without an ounce of subtly to legends twice his age, like Nas, AZ, Notorious B.I.G. etc. Greta Van Fleet is using the exact template that catapulted Led Zeppelin to mythological stratospheres. Take a listen to Leon Bridges' debut and tell me you don’t hear Sam Cooke.
In our internet age, there is no monoculture. We are long past the days of Beatlemania, or Michael Jackson dominating the charts, or even Pharrell Williams being credited on almost half of North America’s radio charts as he did in 2003. The music industry, and our tastes, are more fractured than ever before. What you see as a classic, the next person may not have ever even heard of — old or new. So how do we even denote what a classic is? What makes something a classic?
Is it its age? The term “instant-classic” gets thrown around willy-nilly, and we’re all guilty of supposing a trajectory for a piece of work that has yet to be. This writer likes to keep a “Five-Year Rule” in mind when ascribing that denomination on a piece of art that, while it should be a designation of rarified air, seems more than common. The world seemingly turns faster today than it did a year ago, a decade ago, than it did half a century ago, and the objects in our rearview mirror do genuinely feel closer than they appear. While there’s nothing rigid about how time moves or how eras come and go, if you take a careful look at pop culture going back, trends of one-time permanence tend to fade after about five years. Unless they don’t. A good example is hip hop, which was the victim of confident punditry shrugging it off as a fad, soon to be cast aside for a return to regularly scheduled programming — hair metal. And hell, even hair metal wasn’t supposed to last, but Bon Jovi is still touring, and Brett Michaels is still trying to find love. Nothing ever really dies if its fans haven’t.
Cultural cachet? Is there an economic benchmark an album needs to surpass to be called a classic? Then how do you consider The Velvet Underground & Nico, wasting in purgatory for a decade before people caught on to its brilliance? Or Funcrusher, by all accounts the first album to coin ‘underground rap,’ which sold only 30,000 copies before falling out of print. Milton Nacismento’s Clube De Esquina and Erasmo Carlos’ Carlos, Erasmo are two of the most breathtaking records you will ever hear, and they never even charted in North America.
Does a classic have to be pretty or catchy? That would exclude massively influential albums like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, or the entirety of Throbbing Gristle and Swans’ catalogues. Without them, there would be no industrial music, no noise. No Yeezus, no Death Grips, no contemporary artists that push boundaries of how ugly art can be. When you boil it down, what does ‘classic’ even mean?
Marc Lamont Hill once wrote that a favourite album “isn't necessarily the best album in the collection. A favourite album is the one that you wrap yourself in when you're feeling happy, sad, angry, lonely, or nostalgic. A favourite album is the one that you feel personally connected to in ways that are difficult to explain.” He was writing about Common’s 2000 album Like Water For Chocolate, which, if you ask me, is a stone-cold classic. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. The point is ‘classic,’ like so much of our media literacy, is an elastic term that will differ from ear to ear. But Lamont-Hill’s definition of a favourite album sounds like it would apply to whatever you deem a ‘classic’ as well.
So, in five years from now, will Geese’s Getting Killed be revered as bona fide? Or will it slip away in the stream like so many incredible works do? Will you still hear people humming along to Neil Young or Feist? Will underground stalwarts like Billy Woods and Elucid surge in popularity? Will Donald Byrd’s Places & Spaces still be the go-to cookout music? Or will they all be forgotten? It’s impossible to say.
So why do we love the classics? It’s also impossible to say, exactly, but it’s probably because we love music, and the music we love, in each of our own little worlds, is and will always be classic.
Header image: Werklund Centre and Classic Albums Live present Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet, November 2025. Photo by Selda Dölekoğlu