By now, you’ve probably experienced the 2016 throwback craze firsthand. From old trends to Instagram aesthetics to popular songs, 2016 is back in style, whether we like it or not. But were things really that great a decade ago, or is that just the nostalgia talking? Let’s explore this question through a musical lens.
Zara Larsson is probably the most infamous artist to benefit from 2016 nostalgia. Last year, her song “Lush Life” (released in 2015) started going viral again. This year, it became the ultimate theme song for proclaiming things were better way back when. This resurgence in her career led Larsson to collaborate with British pop-star PinkPantheress on a remix of Pink’s song “Stateside.” And “Stateside” simply couldn’t be more viral at the moment (thanks, Alysa Liu).
Zara Larsson’s music certainly deserves this second wave. It’s upbeat, sunny pop —easy to get stuck in your head but full of enough genuine talent that it doesn’t get annoying. I definitely enjoyed “Lush Life” when I was thirteen in 2016, and I’m not mad that it’s back.
However, that can’t be said for some other decade-old hits. Here are a few songs that I think should make a “Lush Life”-esque comeback and a few that should stay buried in 2016 where they belong.
Leave in the teens: “Close” by Nick Jonas ft. Tove Lo
“Space was just a word made up by someone who’s afraid to get too…close!”
2016 was undoubtedly the era of the Nick Jonas rebrand. Trying to strike out on his own and distance himself from the Disney Channel Jonas Brothers image, Nick began releasing more sultry, sexy songs. Tove Lo of “Habits (Stay High)” and “Talking Body” was definitely the one to collaborate with for this type of sound.
Unfortunately, “Close” is just a boring song. Nick uses a typical 2016 breathy and drawn-out singing style, one that we’ll hear in a lot of these tracks. This style isn’t always bad, but “Close” just isn’t musically complex enough to make up for that dated pop sound. The song’s first beat drop on the word “close” is pretty fun, but then we hear this same drop and repetitive chorus again and again.
And it’s a four-minute song. I’m not usually one to complain about song length (one of my favorite songs of all time is Green Day’s 9-minute track “Jesus of Suburbia”), but this one definitely could have ended after the second chorus. I remember listening to the car radio in 2016, just waiting for this song to end, hoping something better would come on before I got to school. If it didn’t, I’d be in a bad mood that day.
Deserves nostalgia numbers: “Starboy” by The Weeknd
“I’m a motherf*ckin’ starboy.”
“Starboy” is a certified classic that never really went away. It’s still in The Weeknd’s Spotify top five, even after 10 years. Produced by electronic duo Daft Punk, it’s no wonder “Starboy” just sounds so crisp musically.
Though The Weeknd sometimes sings in the same breathy style as Nick Jonas and many other 2010s R&B and pop artists, it’s clear he’s talented beyond just knowing the trends. His voice on the lyric “look what you’ve done” just sounds ethereal. And for a song about the fame of its singer himself, it manages not to be intolerable. Which is hard to do when you’re writing a song about how rich and successful you are. You might not even notice that’s the theme of “Starboy,” since you’re probably too busy dancing to it.
Leave in the teens: “Renegades” by X Ambassadors
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, livin’ like we’re renegades.”
Songs like X Ambassadors’ “Renegades” have since been retroactively dubbed “Stomp Clap Hey” music. This moniker is pretty self-explanatory. It openly mocks the generic 2010s hipster style characteristic of bands like The Lumineers, Fun., Mumford & Sons, and yes, X Ambassadors. (As a side note, I highly recommend listening to Kyle Gordon’s excellent parody of Stomp Clap Hey songs. It gets right to the heart of the criticism).
And look. I liked Stomp Clap Hey. When I was thirteen, it felt pretty genuine to me. I’m still a fan of the band Fun. In particular, though I must say, their catalogue goes into some less-basic stylings as well. But “Renegades” represents everything this genre is mocked for. A generic youthful optimism that really means nothing. Rebellion as mass appeal.
When it first came out, “Renegades” was a pretty fine song about choosing a lifestyle of freedom that goes against the mainstream. We can all get behind that idea. But then it was used in a popular, constantly-playing commercial for the Jeep Renegade. And nothing says rebellious renegade like…being in a commercial. This song embodies the aestheticization of the alternative. It’s the musical equivalent of “punk clothes” being sold by high-fashion brands for $300.
Deserves nostalgia numbers: “Tear in My Heart” by Twenty One Pilots
“My taste in music is your face!”
Maybe it’s because I was getting into my (first) emo phase in 2016, but this song feels like nostalgia distilled. It was less overplayed than some of the other tracks from Twenty One Pilots’ “Blurryface” (“Stressed Out” and “Ride,” for example), but it still gained a moderate amount of popularity among casual fans of the band.
This song is still sweet, catchy, and humorous today. And the lyric “I’m driving here I sit/cursing my government / for not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement” will always be timely. They really never fill those holes.
Leave in the teens: “Starving” by Hailee Steinfeld, Grey, and Zedd
“I didn’t know that I was starving ’til I tasted you.”
I feel similarly about this song as I do about “Close” by Nick Jonas. It’s meant to be provocative and sexy, but it just falls flat when you listen to it more than once. It does have that classic Zedd electronic breakdown in the chorus, though. I have to talk about Zedd because back in 2016, Zedd was featured on basically every pop song. Despite his omnipresence, no one my age knew who Zedd actually was, and that felt hilarious at the time.
Well, he’s a German record producer and DJ. He adds a little club-remix spice to every track he’s on, and that’s not bad at all. I have no problem with Zedd.
What I do have a problem with in “Starving” is the lyric “By the way, by the way / you do things to my body.” This is the most placeholder-sounding lyric of all time. The song is meant to be flirty and fun, and yet we don’t even know what’s happening beyond the fact that someone is doing something to someone’s body.
“Starving” isn’t horrible to listen to, but I much prefer the modern equivalent of sexy pop. Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter (and their collaborators) are much more creative than the five (!) songwriters on “Starving.”
Deserves nostalgia numbers: “Wait a Minute!” by Willow
“I think I left my consciousness in the sixth dimension.”
“Wait a Minute!” had more or less already had its renaissance. It was a popular TikTok song between 2019 and 2022, which led to it going 2x platinum. This is how I first discovered the song, and I can’t really remember hearing it in 2015-2016. Still, its continued popularity shows how dated it sounds.
“Wait a Minute!” is a vibey R&B pop song that can be enjoyed in any era. Willow Smith has an engaging voice, and her lyrics always conjure interesting ideas.
Leave in the teens: “Closer” by the Chainsmokers feat. Halsey
“Baby, pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover.”
This one is a controversial pick, I know. “Closer” is second only to “Lush Life” in terms of songs that are at the forefront of 2016 nostalgia right now. And I get it. I loved Halsey, and I loved The Chainsmokers in 2016. But this one simply isn’t worth the hype to me.
It feels like the perfect combination of “Close,” “Renegades,” and “Starving.” Which is to say, it’s better than all three of those songs. But it’s still got that repetitiveness, that empty celebration of youth, and that sexiness that feels like it’s trying too hard to be daring. And it shouts out a car brand. Maybe I just hate songs that advertise cars. It takes me out of it.
But I do think Halsey and The Chainsmokers are nostalgia-worthy artists. I just firmly believe they’ve each got better songs than this. “Roses” for The Chainsmokers and “Colors” for Halsey.
Deserves nostalgia numbers: “Good Grief” by Bastille
“Every minute of every hour, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more.”
I recently argued with a friend about the musical value of Bastille. In other words, I’m fighting the war on Bastille on the side of Bastille. But I understand that to some people, the band is definitely in that “Stomp Clap Hey” space. I won’t go out on a limb and choose “Pompeii” for this list, since, even though I liked that one too, it was certainly overplayed.
“Good Grief,” however, is everything I love about Bastille. There was a hot minute in 2018 where I knew all of their songs, and it was because “Good Grief” introduced me to their wider catalogue beyond “Pompeii.”
“Good Grief” is musically complex. It’s never overly repetitive and, like many other Bastille songs, it features a dialogue sample from a seemingly random film (this time, it’s the 1985 classic Weird Science). And I absolutely love a dialogue sample. It’s like an audio version of collage. I also love an upbeat song with objectively sad lyrics.
Honorable mentions
Before I reveal my last couple of songs, I thought I’d shout out two honorable mentions. It was hard to pare down this list, so here are the tracks that I still want to talk about but didn’t quite make it into either category.
Honorable annoying song: “Work” by Rihanna feat. Drake
“Work work work work work work.”
This one I had to put in the honorable mentions because I don’t feel right hating on a Rihanna song, icon that she is (I do feel fine hating on Drake though). However, I remember despising this in 2016. Upon another listen in 2026, it’s not a bad song. The verse is pretty good! It’s the chorus that I couldn’t stand. If you turned on the radio in 2016, you’d be hearing “work work work work work work.” No matter what. You would be hearing it. And so would other people, so when you said the word “work” in casual conversation, someone would inevitably start singing this. It’s a decent song, but it’s so repetitive that if you hear it more than once a week, you’ll start going mad.
Honorable nostalgia jam: “Genghis Khan” by Miike Snow
“I get a little bit Genghis Khan / don’t want you to get it on/with nobody else but me.”
Now, I put “Genghis Khan” here as an honorable mention because it was never quite as popular as some of these other songs. It was always a little silly and campy. A cult-classic of a 2016 song, if you will. You won’t see it on any nostalgia playlists, but it’s still a fun listen. The lyrics are ridiculous, but somehow that makes the song itself ridiculously good. And the music video is one for the ages.
Leave in the teens: “PILLOWTALK” by ZAYN
“Nobody but you, ‘body but me, ‘body but us, bodies together.”
To really speak from a place of haterism for a moment, “PILLOWTALK” is an absolute nothing song. It’s yet another slow, 3-minute track that intends to create some shock value with its mature storytelling, but just doesn’t really sound good. What was happening in 2016! Why do all the top songs sound like this! Look, I understand Zayn Malik was trying to do his own thing after leaving One Direction. He was having his Nick Jonas arc.
However, this song sounds like it was rejected from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack. I actually had to look up if “PILLOWTALK” was in Fifty Shades of Grey, because it absolutely sounds like it would have been. It wasn’t, so its popularity is honestly still mystifying to me.
Deserves nostalgia numbers: “Redbone” by Childish Gambino
“Daylight, I wake up feeling like you won’t play right.”
“Redbone” is a timeless song, and a perfect one to finish off this list. Heavily inspired by 1970s psychedelic funk, it has a hauntingly beautiful groove to it that feels just as fresh in 2026 as it did in 2016. The falsetto vocals provided by Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) are a wonderful display of Glover’s talent as well as that of his producer, Ludwig Göransson.
The song is five minutes and twenty-six seconds long, and all of those seconds are absolutely treasured by Childish Gambino. This is a song that deserves to be long, a song that creates an atmosphere the listener wants to live in. It takes its time without wearing out its welcome.
“Redbone,” for those who haven’t seen it or might not remember, played during the opening credits of Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). In a now-unavailable interview with Hip Hop DX, Peele allegedly stated that the song’s repeated lyric “stay woke” was perfect for the message of his film.
Over the past ten years, the word “woke” (originating from anti-racist movements in African-American communities, as far back as 1923) has been bastardized by American conservatives to mean, essentially, something that is annoyingly progressive.
As we look back on the year 2016, let’s collectively remember what Childish Gambino was trying to tell us here: be aware, be intelligent, and be critical of the culture around you.
