The Endless Refrain by David Rowell

The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and The Threat To New Music

by David Rowell

Melville House, 2024

Refreshingly, in The Endless Refrain, David Rowell holds not that “today’s music” is dead or bad or derivative, but only that it is ephemeral. Pop music has always generally been that, of course, though there is a significant portion from the previous century that remains popular today. Rowell believes that older pop and rock songs have assumed a place in popular culture and imagination that their more recent counterparts have largely failed to achieve, through no fault of their own.

We are informed that in 2022, 72 percent of digital music consumption and radio play was of older music. So called “legacy acts” dominate the concert industry: many hundreds of thousands went to see Genesis and Billy Joel perform in 2022, despite neither of them having released new music in three decades. As of May 2023, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, which came out in 1977, as well as greatest hits collections of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Queen, were all in the top 50 of the Billboard 200. Each had appeared on that chart for well over 500 weeks.

This is not a book about data, however. Rowell provides the disclaimer that he is writing about music and feeling. In a general way, his feeling is obvious and its expression runs through every sentence, but he struggles to crystallize it so that it can be picked up and examined. For example, while he emphasizes that it is ‘80s and ‘90s music in particular that he is talking about, at the next instance it becomes that of the ‘70s and ‘80s. And he is grateful that ‘70’s songs weren’t hampered by music videos, forgetting that the main reason he supplies for his argument is the arrival of MTV.

Television’s first twenty-four-hour music channel, Rowell says, introduced a new kind of musical periodicity. Naturally, the same music was being played again and again, since there were only so many songs with expensively produced videos. During the first decade of MTV’s existence, we are told, record sales (presumably in the US) doubled, though the evidence for causality is not given. In any case, the idea is that ‘80s music wormed into the ear and stayed there as a result of “an almost sinister level of monotonous programming carried out by those who believe that repetition is what we want from music most.”

Rowell, who was born in 1967, at various points acknowledges the obvious counterpoint to his thesis, that it is mainly a matter of generational perspective, but summarily dismisses it. He even presents data that support the generational divide, choosing to ignore it. In reality, to the casual post-millennial listener there is no felt difference between Madonna and Avril Lavigne, or between Aerosmith and The White Stripes.

The presentation of Rowell’s case is allotted almost half the book’s length. It is followed by two field studies or, in the author’s own analogy, two live albums to the first part’s “studio recording.” Rowell’s journalistic pedigree shines through in an endearing profile of a cover band of the rock group Journey, as well as in his uneasy look at the development of holograms of dead singers for use in live concerts. These chapters, interesting on their own, don’t help to elucidate the book’s argument any more than the mere statement of their premise would have.

Compared to popular books on this topic, like Simon Reynolds’ Retromania and Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music, David Rowell’s effort seems both narrow in scope and vague in execution. Still, The Endless Refrain is a very pleasant read, written in prose that is journalistic in the best sense of the term, engaging and immediate. And though Rowell is one of many music writers who use the word “crescendo” incorrectly, all is mended, since there are no true crescendos here anyway.

Nikolas Mavreas is a reader living in Athens, Greece.