This article examines the significance of popular-music-related nostalgia broadcast on French television, particularly since the launch of the successful Âge tendre et têtes de bois series of concert tours in 2006 and holiday cruises in 2008. Building on existing academic accounts, particularly in psychological science and consumer and marketing research, my study demonstrates how television coverage of popular music emphasises joy, rather than the ‘bittersweetness’ often associated with nostalgia, views the past more positively than the present (‘simple nostalgia’), represents a fantasy return to youth, and promotes social and cross-generational cohesion. On occasion, however, such coverage is tempered with expressions of ambivalence or reticence. While popular-music-related nostalgia is defined by television coverage as an ‘emotion’ or ‘experience’, it is also viewed as a commercial force and in terms of its own problematic status within the wider musical and cultural field.
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