The Apple Commercial And 100 Best List (And The State Of Culture)

In Apple’s now rescinded iPad commercial where it smashed a bunch of nostalgia-inducing stuff, they seemed to want to say, “You don’t need the exact old stuff when you can access it through this new thing.”

In Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list, where an editorial-only crew (re: not based on streaming stats or business interests) of culturally relevant people stacked old and new albums into a massive list, they seem to say, “As of 2024 these are the works, across generations, that are exerting the most influence and standing the test of time.”

Both are old and new mashups. Both are struggling to get an exact message across. But maybe that struggle is the point.   

The state of culture seems to be we don’t know how to make sense of the past in a strangely new way. 

We know what’s old and we know what’s contemporary, but with all that’s old immediately contemporaneously available - ?!?!?

On one hand, we want curated lists for discovery. We want to walk into the arcade and see the crowd popping quarters into a game to know it’s popular. We want to go digging for the Dylan album that influenced our favorite modern artist. 

Or at least us pre-smartphone remember folks do. 

On the other hand, we want curated lists to establish culture. The iPad commercial felt nasty, but the 100 Best List feels… the same, and I can’t get upset about it. It’s a lot of records and you know what? You can stream and sample your way through any or all of them. And a bunch of these aren’t even great front-to-back records in the first place!

The post-smartphone folks have that working in their favor. They didn’t have to plunk down almost $20 on Marshall Mathers. They do get to skip their way through Astroworld. That’s just one easy example too. But I’m not going to get hung up on my front-to-back players list so much as say that’s the greatest weakness in this list.  

Nostalgia is just trickier across generations right now than maybe it’s ever been. Thanks to technology. Thanks to availability. 

The commercial, the list, and the state of culture is we don’t know how to talk about this. 

But maybe that’s the best thing this commercial and list have produced so far. 

We’re talking. 

The discourse is out there. 

Don’t overlook the engagement shifting, and I think positively, as it relates to both of these. 

What do you think? I’ve seen enraged discourse about both, as expected, but I’ve also seen a lot of thoughtful conversations too. There’s actually talk about what parts of nostalgia are appreciated and why that I haven’t quite seen in recent memory. Curious to hear more from others on this. Click reply or find me.

Respect to Samsung for this response too (granted, WTF were they thinking with the AI bit at the end too)