Lonely Nostalgia YouTube Playlist
The New Yorker yesterday posted an article about the emotional experience of listening to the metal version of Toto’s “Africa” on YouTube.The popular video mimics the sound of a pop song echoing through an empty shopping mall. The piece reflects the effect of the song:
In my mood at 3am, the YouTube editorial uploaded by a user named Cecil Robert was too impressive to endure; it sounded like longing and consolation together, turning into emptiness, a rush of warmth emanating from emptiness.
Lifehacker’s EIC Melissa Kirsch already has a name for it: The Han Solo Feel.
Feeling Han Solo is an emotionally ambiguous form of nostalgia, triggered by unexpected stimuli. The ” Unsolved Mysteries” theme might smell of carpet in a friend’s living room, or holding a cold enamel pin in your hand might remind you that you are waiting for your mom to pick you up from the youth group. The man who coined the term sparked a lot of sentiment with an old poster of Han Solo.
Editors Africa, according to The New Yorker, is part of a growing genre of lonely nostalgic music hitting YouTube and SoundCloud. (You won’t find these edits on a more tightly controlled platform like Spotify.) It also looks like the least stupid of Childish Gambino’s YouTube “Redbone” edits. You can listen to 51 examples in Lifehacker’s new YouTube playlist “The Han Solo Feeling” – mostly nostalgic, slightly modern, made by someone who wanted to immerse themselves in the feeling.
There are mall editors for songs like MGMT’s Kids and David Bowie’s Heroes; Editing the “other room” by Muzzy Star and Lana Del Rey; Driving in the Rain by Arcade Fire and Frank Ocean. There’s a steamwave of ABBA and Michael Jackson at the end, and a few low-fidelity video game edits at the end. (Oddly enough, no one did the montage of Mario Kart Played in Another Room that would give me a frenzied Han Solo incident.)
Which song makes you feel nostalgic for being alone, and what “effects” do you add to it in your head?