Everything Old Is New Again, And Everything New Is Out Of Luck

In January of this year, music and pop culture writer Ted Gioia wrote an article in The Atlantic titled "Is Old Music Killing New Music?" I think about this piece every time a big TV show nabs a particularly effective needle drop — like Stranger Things did with Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)," which then re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #8, becoming Bush's first top-10 single in the US. (As of today it's up to a new peak of #4.) Or when TikTok turned Matthew Wilder's seminal "Break My Stride" into a meme-prank. Or when the platform's users found and subsequently exploded any number of older songs: Fleetwood Mac's 1977 classic "Dreams," Aly & AJ's 2007 hit "Potential Breakup Song," Britney Spears' 2011 cut "Criminal." It even crosses my mind when artists like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young sell their catalogs for hundreds of millions.