Before there was Taylor Swift, before Charli XCX, there was a quiet Brit by the name of Mark Fisher.

Fisher was brilliant, a Marxist whose landmark Capitalist Realism more succinctly and insightfully described our current state of affairs than any other cultural critic. One of its central theses is that, under capitalism, we cannot imagine any viable alternatives to capitalism, even as its inherent contradictions produce terminal phenomena like climate change. As Fisher wrote, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, we became unable to imagine new futures for ourselves. Under this affliction, we turn backwards, and inwards. If there is no future, then there is only the past. While these ramifications are most serious with regards to our politics and livelihood, the symptoms themselves are easiest to recognize in our popular culture. Each year our most watched films and television series endlessly refer to themselves, treading the same tired ground their forerunners did. It’s not that the past is more familiar or comforting (although it often is) but that we are nearly incapable of creating something new, beset as we are by futureless-ness. For a long time, this preference for reheated, self-referential junk has been limited to Hollywood, where it can at least be justified in economic terms— movies are obscenely expensive, and sequels are viewed as safer investments. (A good example of this is Alien: Romulus, which is a ‘legacy prequel’ to the original Alien— nearly fifty years old— and Aliens, but not necessarily Alien 3, or any of the other Alien properties. Questions of canon aside, Romulus is notable because it lifts wholesale dialogue from its predecessor films. What function does this serve? By regurgitating those ‘iconic lines,’ the film gives the audience the pleasure of recognizing Alien. Wait, didn’t they already plop down $14 to watch a “new” Alien in theaters?) No more. Over the last several years we have seen the appearance and growth of this phenomenon in our popular music— and not just at the level of chart toppers and megastars, but even in the margins, in independent music, in the supposed domain of the ‘real’. Allow me to build my case.

Taylor Swift is a few months from the last show of her Eras Tour which, any way you slice it, is the most profitable and popular concert series of anyone at any time in human history. It has grossed more than a billion dollars. It has lifted the economic tides of entire nations. What are the contents of this most fantastic show? They are the dredging up of ten album’s worth of old work. Even as she releases new music, her setlist is dominated by these decade-old tracks, songs you would have had the chance to see live hundreds of times in the last fifteen years. It’s not that her fans flatly prefer her old work, either- her recent albums held the charts for months at a time and moved hundreds of thousands of copies. And yet, Swift and her audience are preoccupied with the old work— her two ‘surprise songs’, usually her oldest material, are some of the biggest moments of the night. Fisher would have referred to this fascination with the old as the ghosts of one’s life, haunting us even when we strive to create the new.

No where is this clearer than in Swift’s series of Taylor’s Version re-recordings. Under the guise of a feminist reclamation of one’s own work, she has sold her entire audience the same product twice. Imagine her creative output were she not, unfortunately, tasked with redoing ten year’s of music (and charging double, too). And her fans love this. It is impossible to understate how popular these albums are, even though they have always been available to listen to. These are not lost works found in a dusty archive. They’ve been here the whole time. No Swiftie is upset by this, and they’re getting bilked by a billionaire all the while. This is Fisher beyond parody. We are shelling out millions for art that is only new because the label says so. We cannot imagine doing anything else.

This phenomena, this backwards looking, as opposed to film, moves much more quickly. And it doesn’t take a decades long career, either, as with the Eras tour: in fact, it takes only months. Brat, the clear album of the summer, was shockingly fresh and experimental, especially for the level of mainstream popularity it achieved. This paragon was followed, less than half a year later, by Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat. This is a “remix album,” but it might be more accurate to call it a retooling of the original, with new guest features, alternate arrangements, and refreshed beats. This is Fisher written out for you plainly. “Completely Different but Also Still Brat.” The light of creation, of the new and real, is immediately snuffed out. Immediately the specter of the familiar enters. Creation tainted by the mandate of reference.

But surely this is limited to the major record labels, the domains of shareholders and executives! To those with no interest in art, only profit! No. This despondency and failure of imagination, endemic to capitalist realism, is omnipresent, consuming, insidious. It is not a disease that afflicts just capital-c Capitalists— holding cartoon bags of money— but every creative. A few weeks ago was the twenty fifth anniversary of the band American Football’s self-titled debut album. Forget how influential the album has been— the legion of cheap copies it inspired, its real idiosyncrasies soon co-opted by second-rate imitations— and consider how totally unlike it was anything that came before it. How to mark the anniversary of the monument of alternative, independent music? Sure, I can take a remaster of the album, given how our technology has changed, and yes, the band’s label, indie touchstone Polyvinyl, did re-engineer the record.

But they also commissioned a dozen artists to record a cover of a song on the original album. Issued alongside American Football (2024 Remastered) is American Football (Covers)— or maybe it’s called American Football and it’s Completely Different but Also Still American Football? You now have the option of listening to American Football recorded by bands who are, most definitely, not American Football. We are celebrating the triumph of creation by bringing ‘round its bastard homunculus, slobbering and drooling and tripping over itself. We fail to imagine, but worse, we seem compelled to iterate on even our most novel works.

(Metallica did the cover album thing a few years ago, for the anniversary of the black album- so not even the idea is original.)

I want to emphasize that these re-recordings and remixes are not, in and of themselves, of poor quality. I’m aware of these artists and their music precisely because I enjoy them so much.  In some small ways, they may even improve on their original versions. I think bb trickz’s verse on the ‘new’ “Club classics” is ‘fire’. I think Iron and Wine’s quiet, introspective cover of “Never Meant” is an interesting subversion of the original’s frenetic, angular quality. Hell, even some Taylor’s Versions— billed as only justice paid due, simple ‘re-recordings’— have their moments. “Girl at Home,” from RED (TV), the most altered version of any TV track, is markedly better than its original.

We are not content with art for art’s sake. We do not allow our monumental works to rest. We don’t even let our trash rest. We alter it, slightly, to increase its consumption, and because we cannot possibly imagine a “future music” that is not preoccupied with its relation to the music that came before. Mark Fisher originally posited that rap, with its focus on sampling and reconfiguring existing tracks, was not the last post-modern music, but the first capitalistically real, because it truly could not exist without reference to past work- past work its raw materiel in need of refinement. If only Fisher could have seen these developments of the past five years— the endless rereleasing, the rerecording, the covering, the rehashing. There’s no need for such subtlety in your thinking, Mark. It’s about to get a lot more obvious.