By Leah Simons
A jingle, that one song that played on your first night out or an album you had on repeat as a teenager: nostalgia weaves its way into music and always manages to help us return to our past.
By speaking to experts, superfans and those helping to keep the musical past alive, we’ve explored how music and nostalgia can go hand in hand.
How can audio conjure memories?
Claire Renfrew, a chartered psychologist specialising in music psychology explained that “music is closely linked to memory because it activates both emotional and cognitive systems in the brain simultaneously.”
Claire noted that the hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for memory function, while the amygdala is the region which processes emotional significance. This allows music experienced during meaningful events to become strongly tied to both memory and feeling.
“As a result, ” she added, “hearing a particular song can instantly trigger vivid emotional recall. For example, songs associated with graduations, relationships, or periods of loss often bring back both the memory of the event and the emotions experienced at the time.
“Music’s narrative and rhythmic structure mirrors the way memories are organised, making it particularly effective at triggering sequences of recollection rather than isolated moments. This interaction between auditory, emotional, and cognitive systems helps explain why music is often experienced as both deeply immersive and emotionally powerful. Ultimately, the ability of music to connect memory, emotion, and identity highlights its unique power to shape human experience.”
What Claire Renfrew calls the ‘heightened emotional sensitivity and memory formation’ of adolescence is what makes the music of our youth so lastingly nostalgic.
“This relates to the ‘reminiscence bump,’” she said, “where memories formed between roughly ages 15 and 25 are especially vivid and long-lasting. Songs connected to important life experiences — such as friendships, first relationships, or early independence — can trigger powerful emotional recall years later.“
And it’s through this process that we become attached to music: “During adolescence, music often acts as a form of self-expression and social belonging. Someone who grew up attending indie gigs, for instance, may feel that artists like Arctic Monkeys or Florence + The Machine reflect aspects of who they are. Ultimately, we attach to music not just because of its sound, but because it becomes part of how we remember and define ourselves in certain moments in time.”
With that understood, how does the brain actually process the music we’re listening to? Claire explained: “Multiple brain systems work together when we listen to music. Sound is first processed in the auditory cortex, where musical features such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre are decoded. From there, music engages broader networks involved in emotion, memory, and attention. Music can feel impactful due to the activations within the brain’s reward system and can trigger dopamine release (the ‘feel good’ hormone) in the brain regions related to pleasure and motivation.”
Superfans have their say:
For some people, the music from youth has always stuck around, with nostalgia being present every time they put on their favourite records. For Grant Davies, 55, and Julian Stephens, 53, this has definitely been the case.
Grant, a George Michael megafan, and collector of memorabilia, discussed how his weekly watch of Top of the Pops in his youth began a 44-year-long love for Michael: “1982, I saw Wham on TOTP – it just caught me with the energy and the dancing.”
Reflecting on why Michael’s music has stuck with him, and provided the soundtrack to most of his life, Grant declared “he had the talent to make you feel like you weren’t on your own – he poured his heart into everything.”
Julian shared similar nostalgia, in his case related to German techno band Scooter: “My love of Scooter started back in the real days of rave in the 90s – it just made me feel happy listening to them and took me to another place away from everything one encounters on a daily basis” From forming friendships based on a mutual love for the band to travelling around the world to see them live, their music has brought him a constant source of “euphoria.”
Making the past present
Nostalgia isn’t just a concept that needs to stay out of reach. Tribute acts, museums and tours all lend their hand to helping people connect with a time far gone.
In Liverpool, this is evident as you wander down almost every street, as a metropolitan shrine to The Beatles.
Cavern City Tours, owners of Mathew Street’s world famous Cavern Club, have pledged for over 40 years to let people indulge in a piece of musical history by not only keeping the Cavern Club up and running but all hosting citywide tours and even a Beatles themed festival.
Victoria McDermott, Head of Marketing at Cavern City Tours spoke on why it’s important to let people explore a time of immense cultural significance: “It’s to preserve the beauty of the story – as a company I think we see ourselves as custodians and making sure that those who want to experience it and even those who want to live it even though they weren’t around back in the 60s have got that opportunity.”
Max Robinson (George) and George Baldwin (John) of Beatles Complete, the Cavern Club’s resident Beatles tribute explained how, by performing to a packed out audience, they let people experience what it was like back in the Cavern’s prime.
Max said: “Sometimes you still I just look out and you’re under the arches and you just start smiling – this is the real deal.”
George added: “It’s just this music that brings everyone together, as soon as you hear it, especially under the arches, there’s this atmosphere that you just can’t really explain.”
And in the end…
From the very first time you hear a song, music and nostalgia make that link. Anything you hear could take you back to your past and conjure memories. Music can be a powerful tool that helps us not only reflect but relive a time now gone.
Music Journalists Leah Simons, Freya Hoare and Izzy Hurcum discuss their experiences with music and nostalgia
