How trends seem to recycle themselves

Are the emo kids of today really all that different from the heavily-made up glam metal guys of the 80’s? Think about it, skin-tight clothes, eyeliner on both genders, an emphasis on sex (any kind is good, right?). The one, undebatable feature which unites them is the fact that metal-heads of then and now share a unanimous hate for these ‘posers’.

It’s funny how the music my parents listened to at my age is now cool again. So cool, in fact, that I have come across peers who have said such heinous things as “I found this awesome, really obscure old school band called Led Zeppelin!”. It wasn’t that long ago that a major CD retailer was stocking ‘vintage’ band tees – Kiss, Motley Crue and Pantera, which resulted in a whole bunch of fifteen year old kids unable to name a single song by the band on their shirt, but looking painfully cool.

Transformers is another example of this. The publicity created by the recently released film has lead to the appearance of a whole host of original Transformers memorabilia appearing on Ebay. This bodes well for all of us who used to run home from school in order to sit in front of the TV and watch the animated series – we now have easy access to Autobot and Decepticon decals for our cars. I daresay we deserve it, after enduring years of nerd-beatings.

There were even some clothes that my mother wore in the 70s which she kept in order to pass on to me. Don’t even get me started on her record collection. It pains me terribly that I can’t burn vinyl to CD so that I can listen to it in my car.

The reality is that as long as we are all human, similar things will always appeal to us. Pop music, fashion – it’s all pretty similar, and I believe runs in cycles in order to try and fool us into thinking that we’re original.

So I suppose we all know what to do now: Don’t throw anything away, it’ll be trendy again in 20 years.

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