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  • Beck released his 2012 "album" Song Reader as printed sheet music. So if you have a guitar or piano and you can read sheet music, go crazy. Or you can listen to other people perform the songs on YouTube. An actual album version featuring a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of musicians was released a few years later.
  • The Foo Fighters' 2011 album Wasting Light was recorded entirely on analog tape in Dave Grohl's garage and used Nirvana's Nevermind producer Butch Vig as producer (albeit compressed to death with modern mastering)
    • They used analog tape and Butch Vig again for Sonic Highways. They also deliberately included 8 tracks on the album because it was a typical feature of 70s and 80s albums (which were often more cohesive than modern albums as a result), and to mark that it was their eighth album. Not only that, but as part of a pre-order from the band's site, fans received cardboard 7"s of the band covering Roky Erickson's "Two Headed Dog". Such cardboard records were a common feature of American childhoods in the 50s and 60s, and could be found on cereal boxes or in magazines, and had terrible sound quality, but did work. Two Headed Dog hasn't appeared elsewhere although rips are unofficially available online.
  • Most of Brian Setzer's career, starting with the Stray Cats, has been in the vein of early-fifties Jazz and Rockabilly sounds.
  • German cover band The Baseballs has this as their schtick, playing modern songs as Rockabilly and even dressing up for the part.
  • The Puppini Sisters, led by Italian singer Marcella Puppini, aren't actually "sisters" in a biological sense, but are named as a Shout-Out to The Andrews Sisters, whom their style of covering modern pop songs as well as period classics is based on.
  • Whether or not this was a conscious effort on their part, The Hives had that sort of image (and sound) that you might date to the Sixties heyday of garage bands, circa Tyrannosaurus Hives.
  • The Mike Flowers Pops' cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall", in a 60s easy listening style. When BBC Radio 1 first broadcast this version, it jokingly remarked that it had "found the original version of Wonderwall", and it reached Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart just a couple months after the original.
  • Anything featured in these two April Fool's episodes of the "Coverville" podcast.
  • For his first few albums, Lenny Kravitz prided himself on using pre-1970s recording equipment exclusively.
    • The Apples (In Stereo) have almost never used non-vintage recording equipment— about 99% of their recorded output has been mastered on eight-track reel-to-reel.
    • Same thing with The White Stripes, who sent promo copies of one of their album out on vinyl and said "If you can't play this you don't deserve to listen to it" (or something to that effect)
  • This is the selling point of Toerag Studios in London, which uses only old analogue recording equipment.
  • Blue Country Heart, a collection of '30s country and blues covers by former Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, features songs recorded in a single take on period instruments.
  • Monster Magnet's early material (the two EPs, Spine of God and Superjudge) is this kind of throwback to 1970s acid rock.
  • They Might Be Giants have them all beat—they recorded their song "I Can Hear You" on a wax cylinder, without using any electricity for the instruments or recording device. Appropriately, the lyrics are about places where poor sound quality is encountered.
    • They also recorded a version of their song "The Edison Museum", fittingly, as they recorded it at the Edison Labratories.
  • Australian artist C.W. Stoneking sounds and acts like a 1930s blues singer.
  • A lot of the stuff Tom Waits records. "Buzz Fledderjohn" from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards was recorded outside.
  • The XTC side project Dukes Of Stratosphear was meant to sound like 60s psychedelia; in fact they tried to pass off the first release as rare recordings by an obscure British band of the 60s. Aside from mimicking the style, they also recorded to 4-track and replicated mid-60s production techniques, including a good deal of Gratuitous Panning.
  • The Beau Hunks.
  • Daptone Records and the label's house band The Dap-Kings get their distinctive soul/R&B sound from their use of only analog recording equipment. This extends to the packaging as well;, the vinyl pressings could easily be conceivably passed off as actual '60s recordings.
    • Sharon Jones' video for her song "100 Days, 100 Nights," recorded with the Dap-Kings, extended this all-analog ethic a step further. The cameras used to shoot the video were black-and-white, vacuum tube-powered machines built in the 1960s, imparting an authentic-feeling softness and haze to the picture.
  • The videos of the Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake songs Dick in a box, Motherlover, and 3-Way are all shot exactly as if they are from the early 90s, including the costumes, the music, and are even shot in Brooklyn, which you've seen a million times in early 90s TV shows.
    • As part of the promotion for their 2009 album Incredibad, The Lonely Island put up two youtube videos that supposedly featured highlights from a 1988 appearance on MTV Spring Break. In reality, of course, they mixed some real late-eighties stock footage with new retraux material made to look like it was transferred off a well-worn VHS tape.
  • The Squirrel Nut Zippers and their various spun-off and overlapping groups are famous for songwriting that meticulously recreates early- to mid-twentieth-century pop and jazz styles, but special mention goes to SNZ alumnus Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, recording live-in-studio with a single microphone.
  • Chiptune band YMCK is all about this. Bonus points for referencing classic games such as Dragon Quest, II & III and Breath of Fire II in that video.
  • One track on the Space Channel 5 Part 2 soundtrack, "Mellow Medley", is a medley of Space Channel 5 songs done in the style of 16-bit game music.
  • Max Raabe & Palast Orchester are a faux '20s jazz orchestra from Berlin; they cover modern pop songs in this style as well.
  • As any Authentic Mississippi Delta Blues Aficionado will testify, Robert Johnson is well-known as the great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Authentic Mississippi Delta Blues Music . Johnson was well-known for his mastery on guitar, small back-catalogue of hard-to-find blues recordings, wild lifestyle, his untimely death at the age of 27, and for the mystique of having sold his soul to 'Ol Scratch down by the Crossroads in exchange for going from a marginal talent playing an out-of-tune guitar to inventor of the modern blues style in such a short period of time. Well, being a poor Southern black bluesman in 1938 meant you did your Authentic Blues Playing on a cheap old acoustic guitar. Fast-forward to the modern age, and you can purchase a Signature Edition Robert Johnson L-1 for $2,793 retail, probably way more money than Robert Johnson ever saw in his entire short life.
  • Lupe Fiasco's "1985" which was done in the style of rappers of that year.
  • Franz Ferdinand has an addiction to old equipment, especially if German or Soviet. Particularly notable is the ancient Soviet Polyvox synthesizer they used for their third album (Tonight: Franz Ferdinand), which had been designed by Soviet engineers as an imitation of Western models without actually ever having seen the innards of a Western synthesizer. They also had a thing for Soviet Constructivism (and El Lissiztky in particular) on the album art during the period of their first two albums.
  • The Spirit of Adventure is an affectionate parody of 1930s styles. It was a reward for stragglers through the credits for Up. Plus for the plot references since it's a narration of Charles Muntz's life.
  • The 2014 physical single release of David Bowie's "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" came in the form of a 10" record, complete with mid-20th century-styled Parlophone (UK) and Columbia (US) record sleeves and labels, befitting the 1930s/1940s-esque jazz sound of the song. The only real deviation from an authentic 10" is the fact that it plays at a much slower rpm, due to the song in question being 7 and a half minutes as opposed to the ~3 that an actual 78rpm held per side.
  • The Swedish band Änglagård, who recorded two albums in the mid-1990s, offered a surprisingly authentic take on the 1970s Progressive Rock sound, complete with actual vintage instruments (Hammond organ, Mellotron) and production techniques. Many fans credit them for the resurgence of interest in the progressive rock genre in the 90s.
  • R. Kelly's song "When a Woman Loves". Aside from the obvious synthesizer use in the instruments, his singing is old-school 1950s Motown crooning.
  • The band F.L.Y. does retro New Wave ska punk and Synth-Pop. With Auto-Tune.
  • Them Crooked Vultures wouldn't be out of place on classic rock radio. Upon hearing it, it's easy to think their debut album came out in 1975 instead of 2009. It helps that the bassist for the band is John Paul Jones. One review remarked that the song "Scumbag Blues" almost sounded like it belonged on Led Zeppelin II.
  • The artists of the France-based Valerie Collective do 80s-style Italo Disco/Synth-Pop/electropop.
  • Adele's "Rollin' in the Deep" (the first single from 21) is a straight throwback to the disco era, complete with the black diva voice. Aretha Franklin's (!) 2014 version even mixes in "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" near the end for extra '70s feel.
  • Most bands from the Elephant Six Collective, recreating psych rock or chamber pop from the 60s/70s.
  • An Innocent Man by Billy Joel is an homage to the music of his youth, full of songs that sound like they could have been performed by James Brown, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons or Motown bands.
  • Phil Collins released an album of 1960s covers called Going Back, which used computer plug-ins, analog equipment, vintage instruments and playing styles, and performances by surviving members of Motown's "Funk Brothers" to produce note-for-note, and sonically similar copies of songs Phil was influenced by. The album cover shows a 1960s-era picture of Phil, mop-topped and suited, sitting behind a drum kit. His 1982 cover of The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" also counts.
  • The 2006 Special Edition of Klaus Schulze's Timewind had vinyl textured CD's, and the original liner notes for "Wahnfried 1883" were printed on the back cover.
  • Alison Moyet's cover of Billie Holiday's That Ole Devil Called Love was recorded in 1985, but still feels like the 1944 original.
  • TNT's 10th studio album, The New Territory, is intentionally mixed and mastered to sound like a 1970s rock record, seeing as the entire album is a tribute to them.
  • "Technicolor Dreams" by The Bee Gees. Sounds like the 1930s, released in 2001.
  • The Pipettes — Phil Spector girl-pop sound since 2003. See also the video for "Pull Shapes, which parodies a scene from campy 70s film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
  • Mind.in.a.box's R.E.T.R.O. album uses SID chiptune-style instruments, and in fact includes a number of Commodore soundtrack remixes, along with computer synthesized vocals on some songs.
  • Pepe Deluxé, a trip hop-turned-psychedelic pop duo, use a variety of recording equipment dating from 1980 to 1890. Some of their music videos, like the faded black-and-white "A Night and a Day", and the washed-out "Super Sonic Sound System", look like they were filmed on vintage cameras.
  • Joy Electric plays with this trope a lot by using analog synths, drum machines, and sequencers, even alongside the more recently-produced Minimoog Voyager.
  • Robyn, once a bubblegum teen pop singer, has undergone a Genre Shift to old-school electro/synthpop since her comeback around 2007.
  • Noise Rock group Steel Pole Bathtub designed their album The Miracle Of Sound In Motion to look like a hi-fi sound effects record from the early sixties, complete with hyperbole-filled liner notes on the back. They actually appropriated the cover image from an actual sound effects record called The Sound Of Sounds, crediting that album's cover artist, Sam Suliman, with the design. This was done for irony's sake, as the actual music was anything but retraux.
  • Shudder To Think's soundtrack to the film First Love, Last Rites has them enlisting various guest vocalists to mimic various musical styles that were popular in the '60s, from Garage Rock ("When I Was Born, I Was Bored" with Billy Corgan) to soul ballads ("I Want Someone Badly" with Jeff Buckley) - probably the most retraux song is "Jelly On The Table" with The The's Matt Johnson, a 1930s style acoustic blues homage that sounds like it's been dubbed from an extremely dusty and scratched single note . Most of the music in the film was supposed to be Source Music from one of the main characters' collection of rare 45 singles, so rather than license actual vintage pop and rock music, the filmmakers had one group write new songs that sounded like old ones.
  • This is Big Daddy's entire schtick. The liner notes for their first album claimed they got stranded on a desert island during a USO tour around 1960 and, upon finally being "rescued" (around 1980), were handed the sheet music for modern songs by their manager and told to make cover versions ... so they made them in the only styles they knew. Their cover of the Star Wars theme, for example, sounds like something the Ventures or Duane Eddy might have done. The cover for their album "Cutting Their Own Groove" features a CD lying on an old-style portable record player.
  • Bluegrass folklore guitarist John Fahey used to record on shellac, put on a chewed-looking label attributing the music to "Blind Joe Death", and slip it into the bins of local record shops. This name wound up being used for his debut album.
  • After spending decades explaining in minute detail why analog recording (vinyl records, tapes) and uncompressed FLAC give you more authentic sound than compressed digital media, Neil Young recorded cherished classics on a 1947 Voice-O-Graph. A Letter Home "sounds like it had been discovered among a batch of scratchy old records in some dilapidated country barn."
  • The CD booklet to Prong's otherwise modern 1994 Alternative Metal album Cleansing includes a catalog of previous albums by the band... printed in black and white and juxtaposed with the cover art to albums released by their label, Epic Records, back in the 1970s (by the likes of Sly and the Family Stone, Neil Diamond, and REO Speedwagon). Part of the joke is that in the seventies it was common for a record album's dust sleeve to double as an advertisement for other popular albums released by the same label - the other part can be considered either Biting-the-Hand Humor about Epic putting out a bunch of music that was considered uncool/irrelevant by the 1990s, or Self-Deprecation about their being signed to the same label as these artists.
  • "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars. The sound matches 80s funk so perfectly that it proved easy to mash up with "Jungle Love" by The Time and "Walk The Dinosaur" by Was (Not Was).
  • mind.in.a.box's fourth album, R.E.T.R.O. is a New Sound Album inspired by chiptunes from the Commodore 64 era of music. The album cover is a simple photograph of an old cassette player, with the band and album name written on it via a label gun.
  • Select copies of albums from the mid-2010s such as Taylor Swift's 1989 and The Tenors' Under One Sky are packaged with an O-sleeve that seems to make the jewel case seem wider than it actually is, in a similar fashion to the way CD's were packaged back during The '80s.
  • Power Pop group The Red Button's 2007 album She's About to Cross My Mind could be mistaken for a late 1970s-early 1980s album, right down to the cover art.
  • In 2015, independent label SRA Records unearthed a lost 1985 split single by The Dead Milkmen and Philadelphia Hardcore Punk group Flag Of Democracy... Of course, the label really got the two bands to record new material mimicking the style and production both groups would have used in that era. This also applies to the artwork, which looks like a typical grainy, black and white punk show flyer produced with a cheap photocopier.
  • Postmodern Jukebox's entire gimmick is that they take songs from The '90s to The New '10s and cover them in the styles of older decades.
  • You might expect this from a Steampunk band like Abney Park, however it may be surprising to hear some of their songs done in an old radio style, such as Until The Day You Die, from the album Lost Horizons. The crackling effects, interwar style musical elements and a brief interlude by two radio personalities promoting a programme are all included.
  • GaMetal includes a few 8-bit interludes, for example in Cornered and Masked Dedede, but curiously never in any of the remixes of songs that included 8-bit in the first place.
  • The Black Angels' "The First Vietnamese War" is a Vietnam War Protest Song written by a Psychedelic Rock band... in 2006.
  • Prom Queen is a 2010s band performing in the styles of the '50s and '60s. Their recordings include vinyl noise and lo-fi filter effects for a greater retraux vibe.
  • This was the main gimmick of the Country Music group BR549, who despite being a product of The '90s, dressed, sang, and played as if they came out of The '50s. (Their first single was a cover of Moon Mullican's 1951 hit "Cherokee Boogie").
  • Evelyn Evelyn:
    • Evelyn Evelyn's music sounds like circus music and their story often sounds like it could take place in the turn-of-the-century, however their Concept Album is set in the 2000s.
    • The music video to "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?" features 1920s/1930s style animations on window frost to go along with its retro sound.
  • Country Music group Midland seems to be intentionally shooting for a late 70s-early 80s country-rock vibe with their music. They also dress accordingly, in colorful suits and cowboy hats.
  • Lil Ugly Mane's early work draws heavily from Memphis rap in the vein of Three 6 Mafia with lo-fi, hollow production and garish cover art.
  • The Kaisers' were an Edinburgh-based British beat group in the vein of The Beatles' early work. They formed in the 90s, but don't sound like it.
  • During The '80s, The O'Kanes (singer-songwriters Jamie O'Hara and Kieran Kane) recorded two albums of almost entirely acoustic country-bluegrass, with many critical comparisons to country and rock music of The '50s.
  • Raphael Saadiq's 2008 album "The Way I See It" was this trope all over, with all the songs inspired by Motown and Philadelphia Soul artists of the 1960s. One track even features a cameo from Stevie Wonder.
  • Wristmeetrazor is deliberately intended to evoke the kind of early 2000s metalcore, mathcore, and emoviolence that was a mainstay of function hall and high school/college event space shows, complete with an unnecessarily (and deliberately) angsty name (taken from a Usurp Synapse song) and song titles, a Chris Taylor watercolor cover art piece, and (though this is likely sheer coincidence) a deal with Prosthetic Records, whose early-2000s catalog contained a lot of similar acts. Overall, they easily could have been on Prosthetic, Black Market Activities, Robotic Empire, or Hydra Head between 2000 and 2004.
  • The band I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, despite having officially formed in 2016, pretty much runs on The '80s aesthetics. Not only is their music heavily inspired by the time period, but so are their music videos, album covers, promotional materials, and so on. Their official releases fit into a time frame for a (nonexistent) eighties band who never got their big break and eventually faded into obscurity. Each new song or video is framed as if it was part of a re-discovered box of old vinyls or tapes.
  • Richard Cheese's entire gimmick is covering Rock & Roll and Hip-Hop songs In the Style of a sleazy Lounge Lizard from the '60s to '70s. A really incompetent Lounge Lizard who can’t remember lyrics, botched covers, and keeps trying to hit on women in the audience.
  • The 78 Project recruits current folk musicians/singer-songwriters to sing covers of old folk/roots/country songs, or original songs with the same spirit, and have them recorded onto 78 RPM records, a format that was phased out after the introduction of 7'' singles and LPs. It was the subject of an acclaimed documentary, and two albums of such songs recorded in all their fuzzy, mono glory are available on iTunes.
  • Glorious Depravity is a side project of members of Pyrrhon, Mutilation Rites, and Woe that specifically seeks to pay homage to the bands and releases from the mid to late 1990s that got them into death metal in their early teens, with a sound highly reminiscent of the more popular death metal acts from that era (particularly Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, and Deicide), along with cover art that looks like it was made with graphic design software from that era.
  • beabadoobee combines low-fi grungy guitars with girl-power anthems for a sound that sounds straight out of '90s rock radio, but was made by a teen in the late 2010s-2020s. A couple of music videos invoke this visually as well:
    • The video for "She Plays Bass" is a straightforward Performance Video, but the use of swirly wipes and Extreme Close-Up Fish-Eye Lens closeups of band members makes it feel like it's out of the early '90s. The fact that the band's bassist's androgynous looks and baggy, grungy clothing makes her resemble Kurt Cobain only adds to the effect
    • The video for "Worth It" is shot in a motel room with very dated décor out of the '70s-'80s and prominently features a landline phone, making it look like it takes place no later than the '90s.
  • John Mayer's 2021 album Sob Rock is intended to sound like a mid-to-late eighties soft rock/"yacht rock" album; the album artwork and music videos follow suit. Physical copies of the album even bear a sticker reading "The Nice Price", a nod to a CBS Records campaign where the label reissued their older best-selling albums at discount prices.
  • Space's 2017 album "Give Me Your Future" uses electronic drums and vintage synths to invoke a 1980s minimal synth/new wave sound.
  • Superdrag had this as a recurring theme in their cover art for a spell in the 90s - Stereo 360 Sound, Regretfully Yours, and Senorita all featured vintage 60s photos of attractive models on the cover and looked more suited to easy listening or bachelor pad music than the Power Pop the albums actually contained. As a variation, the artwork to Head Trip In Every Key jumped ahead to The '70s, with the central image being a woman in heavy eye makeup and a flowery hippie top listening intently to some large 1970s-era headphones with her eyes closed - this arguably fit the music better this time, since the album did include some homages to Baroque Pop and Psychedelic Rock.
  • Radiohead tried to make "You and Whose Army?" resemble a song by The Ink Spots, muffling microphones with egg boxes and adding further treatment to the vocals to make it sound old-fashioned.
  • The Offspring had "When You're In Prison", a comedic cautionary take on Prison Rape that sounds like a 40s song, complete with lowered sound quality and cracking vinyl sounds.
  • Fitting its nature as an archival album, the standalone CD release of Johnny Mathis' I Love My Lady brings back the standardized packaging featured on CD releases by Columbia Records and its subsidiaries during the 1980s. The disc tray is solid black (as was standard for CDs before the mid-1990s), the spines feature blocky red text on a white background, the back cover has a large white barcode stripe on the left, and the disc label is identical to a vintage '80s Columbia disc. The hype sticker is even based on the one used for Columbia's "Nice Price" series of budget reissues for best-selling albums. The only major deviation is that the front cover excludes the Compact Disc logo and the "Digitally Mastered Analog Recording" badge.
  • Jus†ice's 2013 Live Album Access All Arenas designs its disc label to resemble the ones used by EMI and its sublabels during the 1980s, right down to the font choices.
  • The 2006 SpongeBob SquarePants album The Best Day Ever is done in the style of 60s pop and 70s rock (in the vein of The Beach Boys and the Ramones), and along with featuring musicians from the bands it was inspired by, it's also mixed in mono to evoke the same sound.
  • "Leon Redbone" was a modern (1960's to 2010's) singer-songwriter and musician specializing in reviving early 20th century jazz, blues, Vaudeville, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley classics. He gained fame appearing multiple times on shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Johney Carson [1]. He also is known for singing, the theme song to the 80's sitcom Mr. Belvedere, sung in a 1920's Jazz style. [2]
  • "The New Vaudeville Band" was a 60's era retro-music hall style jazz band that mimicked Rudy Vallée and his megaphone-style vocal. They had several hits on the charts most notably "Winchester Cathedral"

    Music videos 
  • Lindsey Stirling's Pokémon dubstep remix sometimes used video effects like pixellation and overlapping frames, along with eight-bit sprites, nodding back to the technical limitations of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
  • The famous Spike Jonze music video for The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" is a parody of 70s cop shows, complete with 70s-style fonts, film quality, fashions, cars, and Porn Staches.
  • The music video for the Phoenix Foundation's "Bright Grey".
  • Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' "100 Days, 100 Nights" was literally filmed using equipment that's straight from the 1960s. (The director bought two vintage TV cameras on eBay in working condition — for about $100 total.)
    • The packaging for the album from which the song comes (same title) is also deliberately retro. If you have the vinyl pressing, you might well pass it off to your friends as a soul album from 1967 or so.
  • Snoop Dogg did a music video ("Sensual Seduction") with camera filters and effects right out of a late-1970s/early-1980s MTV track, back when record companies and video directors still shot a lot of music videos on video instead of film.
  • The Strokes' video for their 2001 single "Last Nite"
  • Stone Temple Pilots' "Big Bang Baby", which was not only shot on video but even uses 1980s-era video effects.
  • Arctic Monkeys' 2006 video for their song "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"
  • Oxford Collapse's 2008 video for their song "Young Love Delivers"
  • The 2009 videos for the Tinted Windows songs "Kind of a Girl" and "Messing With My Head" are presented as if they were clips from a 1970s music TV show, right down to the cheesy video effects and 4:3 aspect ratio.
  • The Smashing Pumpkins modeled the video for "Tonight, Tonight" after the classic early film A Trip to the Moon.
  • Iggy Azalea's Trouble and Macklemore's Downtown (both 2015) push for a heavy 1970s aesthetic, complete with bleached filters, outdated vehicles and various other relics of the past. It's especially jarring when Macklemore drops a line about Uber and "1988 Mariah Carey hair".
  • "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails was built around the image of a depraved 19th century scientist's laboratory, something reflected not only in the set design, but also the film's shooting and editing techniques, using "slightly out of date" film stock to give the visuals a grainy, vintage appearance. The TV edit goes a step further, replacing more objectionable shots with "scene missing" cards and censoring instances of the word "fuck" by making the footage itself stutter, giving the impression that the music video is reconstructed from degraded surviving clips.
  • silverchair's video for "Across The Night" was done entirely in the manner of early 20th-century black and white surrealistic film.
  • The Mindless Self Indulgence song 'Shut Me Up' has the framing device of a 50s Public Awareness Announcement, complete with grainy black-and-white clips taken from the movie Reefer Madness, a vaguely science-looking guy, and ending with an ominous warning that it (succumbing to Punk-Rock) could happen to YOU.
  • Rob Zombie's video for "Living Dead Girl" combines this with a massive Homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
  • Sum 41's video for We're All To Blame takes place on the 1980s TV series Solid Gold, complete with glitter and spandex-clad dancers has 70s/80s era effects and even plugs their hair metal alter-ego band. More jarring is the fact the band is wearing 2000-era clothes, singing a very serious song.
  • The video for Q-Tip's "Move" appears to be shot on VHS... right down to VCR blue-screen and on-screen displays at the beginning.
  • Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" (which actually has its own trope page), includes a fake copyright notice of 1981 at the end of the video. The song itself is also heavily based on the old 1960s instrumental piece "Telstar", of which Muse frontman's Matt Bellamy's father was part of The Tornados, the band that recorded it.
  • Aqua's video to "Back To The 1980s" have them dancing in 1980s rocker fashions, which fits this tropes with capital R.
  • The Ghost of Stephen Foster by Squirrel Nut Zippers mimics the look of old black-and-white cartoons from the 1930s so well that people often ask if they used footage from those cartoons.
  • Move Your Feet by Junior Senior. The video was actually animated in Deluxe Paint on an Amiga.
  • Beyoncé's "Why Don't You Love Me?" is very dedicated to the retro look.
  • Kasabian's video for "Vlad the Impaler" mimicks Italian exploitation flicks of the seventies and other such fare. Complete with the title character wearing an awesome red and black cape.
  • Yolanda Be Cool feat D-Cup: "We no speak Americano". The Song itself is retraux to some extent as it is part of the Electro Swing. The song they covered it from however, is from that time period: Renato Carosone - "Tu Vuò Fa' L'Americano"
  • The music videos for Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" and "This Fire" feature lots of retraux in their art style. In fact, the band seems to love this trope, as their album arts (especially You Could Have It So Much Better) are built around this as well.
  • In addition to her musical style, many of LIGHTS's videos have a future-retro theme.
  • Los Amigos Invisibles' video for El Disco Anal is made in the style (and quality) of a '80s Menudo videoclip. And since the song itself does sound like something from that era (down to the "miniteca" announcer)...
  • "Tell Her About It" by Billy Joel features Joel singing in a Fake Band ("B. J. and the Affordables") in the style of The Beatles and other sixties groups on The Ed Sullivan Show.
  • The video to Enuff Z'Nuff's "Fly High Michelle", released in 1989, has the feel of 1960s psychedelia, complete with rainbows, balloons, and doves. Then again, Enuff Z'Nuff has always been comparable to what The Beatles would have been if they were a 1980s hair metal band.
  • The Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg Saturday Night Live videos attempt an over the top parody of the '80s. But being the '80s, it just looks like the '80s.
  • The music video for Robbie Williams' Supreme combines actual footage from the '70s with video with similar looks (faded celluloid film, etc.)
  • Similar to the Smashing Pumpklns listed above, Annie Lennox' version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" pays homage to the silent films of Georges Méliès, complete with frames that looked hand-tinted.
  • The video for Pulp's "This is Hardcore" was inspired by a book of promotional stills from 40s, 50s, and 60s, films, including a healthy does of Film Noir and a section near the end features Busby Berkeley-esque choreography.
  • Bruno Mars:
    • "Treasure" is made to look like a typical 1970s disco video, right down to the trippy visuals, VHS quality and sub-widescreen resolution.
    • Ditto for "When I Was Your Man".
    • Then comes "That's What I Like", a tune that (despite its modern music video) sounds like early 2000s R&B.
    • Many of the singles from 24K Magic, including the title song, "Versace on the Floor", and "Finesse" take inspiration from early '90s R&B and New Jack Swing, with the latter's video being an extended homage to In Living Color!.
  • Regular Show made a live-action music video set to their song "Party Tonight."note  It's made to look like a 1980s video.
  • The music video for Weezer's "Buddy Holly" is designed as a Happy Days episode, complete with commercial break and an appearance by the Fonz himself.
  • Coldplay's "Magic" video is filmed to look like a silent movie depicting a music hall magician and his assistant.
  • The video for Nirvana's "In Bloom" shows the boys playing on an early sixties black and white variety show. It alternates between them nervously playing in neat suits and smashing their instruments in drag.
  • The video for John Cougar Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A." was run through a kinescope machine (in which a video image is filmed off a TV screen) to give it the fuzzy monochrome feel of kinescoped TV shows of the 1960s.
  • The video for Bring Me the Horizon's 2014 single "Drown" features the band dressed like your average 1960s rock band (save for the members' very visible tattoos), with a vintage TV show-style backdrop. And while the song is considered a big departure from BMTH's earlier sound, the song is anything but 1960s-influenced.
  • Cautionary tales such as The Wild Angels seem to have influenced the design and planning of the Hoodoo Gurus video for The Right Time. Film quality and all.
  • The video for Sia's "Cheap Thrills" takes the form of a vintage American Bandstand type show, which takes a weird turn when a couple shows up with distinctive two-tone hair and no faces.
  • The music video for Despised Icon's "Bad Vibes" is deliberately done in an early 1990s style, with grainy filters to simulate VHS quality, rapid jump cuts, heavy use of stock footage, and the band performing in front of still backgrounds.
  • Korean Pop Music group EXID's song “Lady” is not only a ‘90s-inspired New Jack Swing piece, but the video employs baggy overalls, Starter Jackets, other stereotypical decade fashion and fake lo-fi graphics to really dial in the concept of the release.
  • Jack Stauber often actually uploads his videos onto physical VHS tapes before putting them online, in order to achieve Deliberate VHS Quality as authentically as possible.
  • So someone on YouTube used live concert and radio performance footage of Gotye and Kimbra performing "Somebody That I Used to Know", combining it with real 1980s archival footage and a 1980s remix track of the same song by YouTuber TRONIX to produce this Retraux masterpiece from "1988".
    YouTube Commentator "Mr. K": This is how fake memories are implanted in.
  • "Guardians Inferno", by David Hasselhoff and The Sneepers, is a disco cover of the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) theme. In its music video, everything is designed to evoke disco performance videos of the 1970s, from the set design, costumes, and lighting. It was even shot on vintage television cameras to get the right look.
  • Migos' "Walk It Talk It" was created with a '70s aesthetic based on music dance programme Soul Train along with a Don Cornelius Expy played by Jamie Foxx. The whole music video was shot on Beta Tape with 480p as its maximum quality.
  • Sanguisugabogg's (very NSFW) video for "Dead as Shit" is done in the style of mid-2000s web animation as seen on Newgrounds and other pre-YouTube providers of user-generated video content.
  • "Happy Days", by the Vocaloid composer GHOST (also known as Ghost And Pals) features a cute girl with demon horns and wings who is drawn in Inkblot Cartoon Style for the majority of the video. It's not as pleasant as it sounds.
  • "1 True Love" by 4-Town, the boy band from Turning Red resembles an online Flash AMV from the Turn of the Millennium with Animesque visuals.
  • The video for Fine Young Cannibals' cover of "Suspicious Minds" pays homage to 1960s music variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, starting out in hazy black-and-white before gradually adding a Splash of Color.
  • "Planet of the Bass" in general is this, an Affectionate Parody of Eurodance by comedian Kyle Gordon whose music video replicates the Y2K-era retrofuturism that many such artists used, but special mention goes to the "Original 1997 VHS Version" of the video, presented in 4:3 aspect ratio and 480p resolution with added film grain to make it look like an old VHS tape recording of an MTV broadcast from the late '90s. There are also unofficial versions that add in some more retraux touches, including tracking effects, an MTV bug in the corner of the screen, and MTV Europe channel bumpers at the beginning and end.

    Genres 
  • While not generally thought of as such, music analysts consider Punk Rock the Ur-Example of retraux in popular music. The genre was designed as a throwback to '50s and British Invasion-era rock, and the basic templates for the two's styles are so similar that music analysts frequently label these earlier acts "the original punks."
  • Synthwave is 80s retraux, essentially. More specifically, it bases its sound off of a mixture of '80s pop and synth-heavy film scores from the likes of John Carpenter, albeit occasionally with more modern influences like House Music.
  • The prefix "neo-" (Neo-Classical, Neo-Romantic), denoting a modern attempt at previous idioms.
  • The whole "electroclash" genre of music, which mimics 1980s Synth-Pop.
  • "Sleaze metal" evokes 1980s Hair Metal, one example is Steel Panther, albeit an Affectionate Parody.
  • Hundreds of Thrash Metal revival bands have sprung up ever since metal started making a comeback in the early 2000s.
  • As well as the Garage Rock revival (60s Nuggets-era garage), Power Pop (70s rock/pop), certain Alt Country bands... if you like old musical genres, there's a niche for you.
  • Vaporwave, which takes most of its aesthetic from '80s & '90s early digital graphics and often sampling/remixing songs from those time periods.
  • The entire psychobilly genre is based on combining 1950s Retraux Rockabilly music with lyrics about zombies and things.
  • The Trip Hop movement in the '90s glorified everything analog (possibly as a backlash against the prevalence of digital equipment in the '80s), resulting in many electronic musicians trying to emulate the beloved nostalgic atmosphere by using old equipment, sampling old records, and even intentionally degrading the sound quality.
    • Boards of Canada base their entire aesthetic on the sound and feel of old educational films (their name is taken from the National Film Board of Canada). Wobbly vintage synth sounds and obscure voice samples are their trademark.
  • There's this musical movement called the "8-bit remix" in which music (eiher a popular song, a selection from a soundtrack, or even video game music from the 16-bit era onwards) is recreated (or remixed) using "chiptunes", which is computerized/electronic music similar in style to what you would hear on an NES, a Master System, or some other 8-bit system. One can find many different examples on sites such as YouTube. Likewise, 16-bit remixes are also an existing movement, attempting to convey how popular songs would sound if they were composed using the sound chips of the SNES, the Genesis, or on rare occasions, the TurboGrafx-16. In the SNES's case, soundfonts from preexisting games tend to be used for these remixes in order to differentiate them from standard MIDI arrangements of the source songs (as the SNES's sound chip uses prerecorded samples as instruments rather than acting as a synthesizer).
  • Bardcore rewrites the lyrics and rhythm of a pop song as if they existed in The Middle Ages or Classical Antiquity. Additionally, it also uses medieval-style artwork for their covers.
  • Some works in the Futurepop subgenre of Industrial invoke this, such as VNV Nation's Automatic.
  • Electro Swing combines the sound of early 20th-century swing with modern electronic music.

    Products 
  • A common trend with CD label art is to mimic the style of a vintage LP label design, often based on whatever was used by the artist's record label before the rise of the Compact Disc format; this is most commonly used with more recent reissues of older albums from the vinyl era, with the 2009 remasters of The Beatles' back-catalog being the most notable example (though the practice was already well-established before then). In some cases, the label design is instead based on common design tropes seen on old disc labels, an especially common take on the practice among releases on record labels formed after the start of the CD era.
    • Columbia Records was a notable early proponent of this style, using standardized disc labels based on their old 1960s LP labels for a number of artists (both new acts and reissues of legacy acts) during the late '90s. Even after they stopped using the practice, many of their artists would keep up the style as an artistic choice (most notably Bob Dylan, whose CD label designs commonly evoke Columbia releases from as far back as the shellac era).
    • This practice even extends to CD-Rs: Verbatim produces blank "Vinyl" CD-R discs designed to mimic the appearance of a 7" record, black grooves and all. The packaging even encourages buyers to burn their old music onto the discs for a "classic" feel (surface noise not included).
  • The mini LP sleeve is a form of CD packaging designed to act as a scaled-down facsimile of an old LP sleeve; this format is particularly popular in Japan for novelty purposes, and are typically used for reissues of albums originally released during the vinyl era (oftentimes mimicking the original inner sleeve and any additional inserts from the original release as well). In recent years, they've also become popular among western releases, typically as part of a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition (most notably with the David Bowie series of retrospective boxed sets) thanks to the fact that their size and shape makes them somewhat unwieldy next to standard jewel cases and digipaks (though some standalone CD releases, such as American Utopia by David Byrne, make use of them).

    Other 
  • Sample replay: In many cases musicians and producers are unable to secure or afford the rights to pieces of music they would like to sample. One widespread way around it this to hire studio artists or singers to recreate the sample, sounding as close to the original as possible, often using vintage instruments and audio setups.

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