2026 is now in full swing, but the internet only seems to care about one thing: 2016. Right now, my Instagram feed is full of people sharing 2016 Rio-filtered throwback selfies, screenshots of Stranger Things’ first season (as if it ever went away), and posts lamenting the ten years since Frank Ocean and Rihanna last dropped music (Smurf soundtrack conveniently notwithstanding). This so-called ‘2016 Trend’ has dominated the year so far, but, in music at least, it’s nothing new – people have long held up 2016 albums as some of the best in recent memory, and this has only intensified over the past month. But was 2016 really that good for music? And, if not, where is this nostalgia coming from?

Perhaps the most vocal proponent of this musical trend over the past few years has been British comedian James Acaster, whose 2021 podcast Perfect Sounds is entirely dedicated to convincing listeners that 2016 was, in his words, “the best year for music ever”. Across 117 episodes, Acaster argues that albums like Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition, David Bowie’s Blackstar, Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled Unmastered, and dozens more exemplify his point. More widely, the fact that 2016 was also the last time we heard from David Bowie, Radiohead, Rihanna, Frank Ocean and Kanye West (as opposed to Ye), would seem to support the idea that 2016 was some sort of musical turning point.

Dr Ethan Heine, adjunct professor of musicology at NYU, however, isn’t convinced. “It’s just such a weird year to pick as a watershed moment,” he tells Dazed over video call. “It’s not like it’s 1968, or the year Thriller came out. I mean, I like Rihanna, but is that really the kind of vitamin that we’re missing in our cultural diet right now? Look, music was 90 per cent garbage in 2016, it’s 90 per cent garbage now, and it will be 90 per cent garbage until the end of time.” 

Still, while Dr Heine is sceptical of the ‘2016 Trend’ in music, he has noticed his students becoming increasingly nostalgic for musical eras gone by. “My students are such boomers in a lot of ways,” he explains. “A lot of them love yacht rock and drum ‘n’ bass, they’re chopping up the [iconic jungle sample] Amen break like it’s 1997, and I think that’s great. Young people are a lot more hip to stuff from the past nowadays.” 

For Dr Heine, however, the origin of this nostalgia lies beyond the releases themselves. “Music communicates nonverbal feelings very well and, to me, [the 2016 trend] seems less about music and more about a time when the internet actually worked,” he continues. “It was before AI slop, before people were getting radicalised into the manosphere through YouTube recommendations, before Trump. 2016 does feel like a bit of a political and social turning point.” 

It’s telling that, in a podcast uploaded just before the ‘2016 Trend’ took hold, Irish podcaster Blindboy brands 2016 as “the year that everything went to shit”. “In the mid-2010s, social media content was kind of dumb,” he explains in the episode. “I used to use Twitter on my laptop, and, in 2016, Twitter started moving onto my phone. Feeds changed. 2016 was the year of the infinite scroll, where you’re just scrolling and scrolling through miserable content. News is now reported to survive in the algorithm rather than to inform us, and these algorithms prioritise negative, threatening content [to maximise engagement].”

In the first month of 2026 alone, these same algorithms have already served up explicit images of children (thanks X), World War 3 hysteria surrounding President Trump’s foreign policy, and videos of multiple murders committed by ICE agents in America. In view of all of that, it’s not surprising that people would be gravitating towards music that reminds them of simpler times. 

Deeper still, many of these technological shifts have manifested in the way we consume music, too. Where music streaming accounted for just seven per cent of music listening in 2010, this had jumped to 80 per cent by 2019 – a shift which has, among other things, led to diminished income for artists. “The music industry is kind of like the broader economy in that there’s a small number of people who are making incredible amounts of money and there isn’t a middle class of musicians anymore,” Dr Heine explains of the reduced royalties streaming platforms like Spotify pay artists. He goes on to suggest that Rihanna’s increasing role as a fashion entrepreneur rather than an artist is evidence of this trend: “It seems kind of sad that, like a person at her level just can’t make money from music alone, or at least enough of it for her own right.”

Elsewhere, mirroring its growing role in social media, the past year has seen growing calls for streaming platforms to regulate the use of AI. For example, amid a 2025 controversy in which the creators of viral, AI-assisted single “I Run” were accused of appropriating Jorja Smith’s voice without consent, Smith’s record label FAMM called for greater controls over AI in the music industry. “This isn’t about Jorja, it’s bigger than one artist or one song,” they wrote in an Instagram post. “The usage and efficacy of AI is growing at an alarming rate and outpacing regulation. ‘I Run’ seems to be a clear example of why we all need to push for some guard rails before the moment is lost.”

So, while 2016 may not have been the best year for music of all time, or even in recent memory, it does tell us something about the world we live in today, and that, Dr Heine believes, might still be useful. “Hopefully we can turn this nostalgia into a drive to push back against some of these developments,” he concludes. “If you miss the pre-Spotify world, you can still buy stuff off iTunes. I’m always telling my students, ‘Bandcamp is where the weirdos are, and where they can actually get paid’. [Anti-streaming] sentiment is definitely building, anti-AI sentiment is definitely building. Resistance is mounting.”