These days it’s hard to turn your radio on without being greeted by some remnant of the past, a musical relic lifted from the sands of time to live again and serve some new booty-shaking purpose. In an era where environmentalism sure seems to transform its very nature into treble clefs and scales aplenty, modern music has taken a turn towards reducing, reusing and recycling.

Cover versions, remixes, sampling, snippets of musical hooks long seen to be legally deceased have come to dominate the airwaves and saunter up the charts like an outfit repeater at the Oscars. In an age where environmentalism is tres tres chic and ‘everything old is new again’, it seems the music industry itself has become rather thrifty in its ability to reduce, reuse, and most importantly, recycle.

Humans, by nature seek out their past to define their future, with particular songs of yesteryear triggering memories of laughing, crying and holding hands at the Year 6 disco with Tommy Thompkins, that make us who we are. We snicker and suffer post-trend shame at the recycling of the beloved 80s bouffant perms and Ray Ban sunglasses as much as we simultaneously cringe and clap to the beat of Rhianna’s abduction of Soft Cell's Tainted Love. We just keep bringing it all back (S Club 7 reference intended).

Melodies can be dug from the second-hand bin, cover to cover, from Wonderwall to We Will Rock You, but often these artistic intentions run astray. At the risk of nanna-ing myself, I was personally traumatised at the thought of Fall Out Boy even shuffling their feet near the royalities to MJ’s toe-tapping Beat It extravaganza. But most infuriating of course, is the meek-minded teeny bopper who refuses to acknowledge the source of their idols’ signature hook. Footnotes ahoy!

Take the musically enriching and prodigious Pussycat Dolls for instance and their adoption of Electric Light Orchestra to add a touch of string class to their first hit Don’t Cha. Or perhaps the originality of the Rogue Traders and their continuous thieving of riffs from Elvis Costello and the owners of My Sharona by The Knack. While the beauty of recycling these tunes sure is swell, nothing grates on the nerves of a grandpappy Costello fan than the ignorance of a choir of Voodoo Child(ren).

But why just recycle the songs entirely when one can simply reuse? Hence the birth of ‘bastard pop’ and the art of the mash-up so carefully crafted by the likes of tunevironmentally friendly artists such as 2 Many DJs. Of these illegitimate musical children the piece de resistance came with the release of underground act Danger Mouse’s Grey Album in 2004, a delicious buttery potato mash of The Beatles’ White Album with modern musical equivalent, Jay Z and his Black Album. The result? Bangin’ beats, Rocky Raccoon smackin’ some ho’s, and a rather large lawsuit. Still, one sweet sweet mashy record.

So why the tune-environmentalism? Why must we bring the harder, better, faster, stronger main course of Daft Punk to Kanye West’s dinner party? Apart from our wistful nostalgia, essentially, music is a fashion, to be worn to death until those who once praised it accuse it of ‘selling out’, before fading into obscurity and shame, awaiting its inevitable re-hash. Like those dreaded 90s overalls we never admit to owning, everything comes back in
 style sometime. Except of course, The Seekers.

Perhaps for musicians its time to grab a calico bag and make use of our current op-shop of musical window browsing. With the rise of an industry of intertextuality, music itself is becoming a scavenger hunt of hints and references which have formed some of our fondest memories and bring delight and horror at their being recycled. But I guess it could be worse - someone could find a way to bring back sea shanties. In the words of the Barenaked Ladies ‘it’s all been done before’.