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The biggest musical event of 2011 wasn’t an album or a band, or even a new style. It was a book: Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, by Simon Reynolds. According to the LA-based British critic, today’s pop culture is imprisoned in the loop of history, thus completely destroying its capacity for innovation and deviance. While Reynolds certainly has a point, maybe ‘retro’... moreThe biggest musical event of 2011 wasn’t an album or a band, or even a new style. It was a book: Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, by Simon Reynolds. According to the LA-based British critic, today’s pop culture is imprisoned in the loop of history, thus completely destroying its capacity for innovation and deviance. While Reynolds certainly has a point, maybe ‘retro’ is too general a buzzword, in that it obscures other phenomena – especially those that are based on the principle of copying, of repetition and reference,but without being merely backward-looking or nostalgic. view page