AIBU to feel sad after listening to nostalgic 80s music?

[BakeOut]

God, why do I feel so sad listening to 80s music?
I spent yesterday evening listening to 3 hours of all the songs I either loved and played or just heard around me (radio, TOTP, Sunday charts etc.) whilst I went through my teen years.
It started by me putting Through The Barricades song (song not album) to play on Amazon music, and then it went on a random play list of all the music from around that time. It was so good, it was choosing all the music that I loved. Every other song that came on I was thinking "Oh I loved this song!" And I couldn't stop listening, it was all so nostalgic. I had a lovely evening listening to it all, honestly haven't heard or played those songs for decades.
But suddenly, when I went to bed, from out of nowhere I felt so incredibly sad. I'd had a lovely day so I couldn't understand why. And I still feel a bit sad this morning. I can't shake this sadness off. It's taken me right back to how I felt all through my teenage years, when life felt really good. When I had my whole life ahead of me, and life felt so easy back then, and I felt like anything was possible in my big, long future. Through my teens I felt invincible and strong and full of hope and aspiration. I had a strong sense of starting out in this adventure of life. The 80s were an amazing time to be a teenager. I know everyone says that about whichever era they grew up in. But my God, the 80s were a good time.
And here I am at 52 feeling like life is so much harder now, my hopes and dreams didn't work out, I'm a different person now to how I was then, life has changed and re-shaped me, I don't have that optimistic excitement for the life ahead of me like I had then, and I no longer have my whole entire life stretching out ahead of me.
I feel very melancholy. This music has churned up feelings and emotions deep inside me tbat I didn't even realise were there. Yet I felt right as rain and perfectly happy yesterday afternoon before listening to it all!
(If you're reading and you're under 50, you probably won't get this!😂)

I'm 43, but I get what you mean. I was once full of hope and dreams. I'm certainly not disappointed with my life and I am happy. But I don't experience the same level of excitement that I did when I was younger. Everything just feels a bit flatter now I'm older.

I get this and I'm 49!! It seems like yesterday that I was teenager, doing my A levels,going off to uni, planning what I was going to do in life. And now here I am fat, broke, divorced and dying the greys out of my hair. Wtf. Music can really take you back to another time and I think feeling this way is normal to an extent. If you find it becoming more frequent and really intrusive and difficult to shake off I'd worry more and seek some support.

YANBU. I think it’s been proven that music binds itself into the part of our brain that holds memories, so just as seeing a picture or souvenir reminds you of a fime and place, so does music.

Listening to music that triggers those memories is a form of therapy, as long as you don’t get too attached to the past.

I think you've explained it pretty well.

Back then there was a whole lot of my life I wanted to change... but I was pretty sure it was going to change, and the possibilities stretched before me.

Now, everything I want to change has already happened, and the possibilities left are harder to envisage (partly because I'm more aware of my limitations).

Dear oh dear that sounds as if my life is dreadful, doesn't it? It's actually reasonably lovely, especially compared to many 57-year-olds. But we all have things we wish were different, and 80s music reminds us of when they could have been.

Well I’m ‘just’ 40 and I get it. That sense of the future being a wonderful exciting place of opportunity. Now we are older we have ageing to look forward to. And the world is a much less optimistic place in general. There was hope for the future in decades gone by. I’m not sure exactly when that changed, or whether it’s just me that’s changed. The young people I meet today don’t seem as carefree as I remember being.

I completely get this! It's a bit like smells that take you back to another time. Nostalgia is a funny one as it's always slightly tinged with sadness. Also, I agree the world is just so much more complicated now than it was then.
I guess it's like a yearning to go back to those carefree times.

Nostalgia...that's why. There's an Alarm song from 1985ish called Spirit of 76 which sums it up.

There's nothing wrong with looking back and regretting some of the decisions made or when things didn't go well.

There is a point where it's does get worrying. I've a friend who feels the best years of her life were the 2 we spent in 6th form. For her it was brilliant, she blossomed, was very popular for the first time and had great fun and brilliant nights out. She however measures the rest of her life against it, talks about it a lot and is constantly on YouTube watching 80s stuff. We have started to get together as a 6th form group and she counts down the days till we meet up again.

Me I have had brilliant times since, several times and look forward to making more happen

I would love to go back for a visit. I'm in my mid fifties and hate what the world has become. Certain 80's songs literally reduce me to tears. We were a very lucky generation.

I'm 62 and I totally get this. Everything you've written, completely resonates with me. I loved the late 70s and 80s. I was talking about John Peel's festive 50 this morning. Like you I felt I could do anything, and it all went downhill from about 1988!

It's even worse when you are in your seventies. I loved 80's music but now I just get sad.

That Welsh word hiraeth is the accompaniment to my thoughts these days.

All good things seem to be in the past now.

I’m in my late 50’s. I still live in the 80’s musically. I think my DS must view me how I viewed my grandad, tapping his foot to Jim Reeves while I was listening to Culture Club. Next week I’m off to see Blamange and Tom Bailey (Thomson Twins), next year Gary Numan and Simple Minds. I’m waiting for Human League to tour again. The 80’s in general, and 1984 specifically were brilliant from a music and fashion point of view.

Yep.

Totally get this and the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago.

I was listening to songs from the 80's and 90's and the songs I grew up with as a kid and as a young adult who went out with friends and went clubbing on weekends.

The rush of nostalgia was perfect and gave me goosebumps and some songs even reduced me to tears.

I listened to track, after track, each one of them holding their own memory or a time in my life when life was simple.

I closed my eyes and I pictured everything from being a kid in my old house growing up. My parents, my grandparents (all of who are gone now) and things and times from my childhood. I thought about school and my schoolfriends. Then listening to the 90's stuff I was transported back to being a teen and my best mates, my boyfriends and those days learning to drive and going out to clubs and dancing the night away until the early hours.

I loved it but then too began to feel a little sad.

I think its sad because those times are gone and we can never get them back. My parents are gone, my old family house now occupied by another. Friends I have lost touch with and an era that was special and times we can never relive.

You don't realise when you are in the moment and living those times how special they are.

But then I realise that this is the same for all times of my life. I also yearn for the days when my children were small and the special time that was.

I also look back on the times my parents were alive and how I loved to visit with the kids. The birthdays, the big family Christmas Day with two tired children.

Life changes and things change so its only natural to feel a certain amount of sadness that things are no longer the way that they used to be.

Maybe one day I will look back at this stage, that I am currently in now, with the same nostalgia.

A reminder, surely, to cherish each experience and each stage and to try and appreciate the here and now.

I'm a year older and definitely get you. I look forward to watching the old top of the pops on a Friday night and I always think about what I was doing that year and get very nostalgic. I even have a little cry. 😔 Especially the family members Inc my dad that are no longer here 😭

Well I can definitely understand your feelings, I’m 62 now so I was 16 as we went into the 80’s. You were only 6, surely the 90’s were your era?

I get what you mean. It's probably a bit rose-tinted spectacles, but I do believe everything was better before the 2000s. I showed DS, 13 and DD,9, some photos of my friends and me at secondary school and they were blown away by how happy everyone looked! I suppose we didn't have mortgages, jobs and children to worry about back then, so maybe things were as stressful for 'proper' adults then as they are now.

I'm 47 and completely get it. I feel like this a lot. My life has not turned out how I wanted and I just feel really sad when I revisit old memories. My childhood wasn't the best , but I feel very grateful to have grown up in the era that I did with a lot of freedom and no internet.

1983 for me.
Ang song from that summer and I’m instantly 14 again and madly in love.

In the words of Ted Lasso - there's a reason the rear view mirror is smaller than the windshield.

Ahhh I completely get it. I am mid 50’s and disappeared into a nostalgic/poignant slightly sad hole after watching One Day on Netflix - pretty much exactly “my” era and brought back so many memories of being at university and running around London in the 90’s doing poorly paid jobs but having the best time. The scene where the Emma and Dexter walk out of the maze together to Sonnet by The Verve got me crying - not because of the storyline but because of the rush of nostalgia and memories of the 90’s and spending time with one particular friend then (we are still friends but have very different lives now).

It aches - I miss my youth and excitement for my future that I had then - but then have to remember at lot of the time I was stressing about “finding” a boyfriend/husband, fear of ending up childless, having to live in a house share in a dodgy part of Brixton forever, having no money etc etc!

Now switching between Radio 2 chart show and Absolute 80s chart show. Takes me back to the 80s and taping songs off of the radio on a Sunday night 😍

This is why I rarely listen to music. Sad but true.

I remember when I was a teenager listening to the ronettes and tamla mow town with my mum. It's come full circle.

Gosh yes, I absolutely loved that series. It really captured the era, didn't it?

I'm 51 and understand exactly what you mean and how you feel.

There really is no better decade for music than the 80s imho - it was the soundtrack to my most carefree years (then the 90s in 2nd place).

Ahhhh I totally understand this feeling. I was trying to describe this to a friend the other day. The ability for some songs to completely annihilate me emotionally. To me it feels like a horrible case of homesickness. I can remember an Alison Moyet song that I had to turn off because it caught me completely by surprise. I also couldn’t watch a video of Frankie goes to Hollywood singing Power of Love.