Nicstalgia turns four!!!
My "Greatest Hits...So Far!!!"
HELLO new subscribers! Welcome to Nicstalgia, your Pop Culture PhD and cultural literacy guide to navigate the nostalgia industrial complex. Quick orientation: About Nicstalgia • Website • Instagram. So happy you’re here!!!!!!! 💖 💖 💖
Not sending this letter out for a week and a half was the longest it’s been in literally years (?!) and I’m happy to be back! Updates from Nicstalgia HQ:
Went back to the allergist and unfortunately no club bangers were playing in the lobby like the first time :( However, I am cured! :) Extremely grateful to be back at 100% after being meh for all of January, and despite it being the like, 14th consecutive day of below-freezing temperatures.
ICYMI, I was featured in Kate Messinger’s amazing Eat Your Feelings Substack! Read it to find out what I love eating when I’m in my feels, what dish I cook to impress a lover, who I’m inviting to my dream dinner party, hot to pronounce bruschetta, and my favorite recipe.
Went to High Valley Books and lost all sense of space and time. I purchased the fourth edition (1969) of clothing textbook How You Look and Dress by Byrta Carson (1949), which I am excited to get into.
I’ve been dancing a lot!! Getting back into Tap has been fabulous! Jazz and Hip Hop are fun as always. I joined a dance company, which I’m so excited about!!!! I’ve now been in a company in my teens, twenties, and thirties. Never give up your dreams, people.
I’m really enjoying teaching CORE and CARDIO DANCE!!! Come take my classes Tuesday nights at Grind House! My playlists have been described by Matthew Perpetua, whom I consider the ultimate authority on high quality playlists, as “extremely good and very cool”.
Speaking of extremely good and very cool playlists, get excited about the new Fluxblog x Nicstalgia collab!!!! My nearest and dearest, Matthew Perpetua, and I teamed up on Y2K Pop: 1999-2002 as a part of Fluxblog’s iconic pop music series. (My other favorite playlists from the series include First Wave Pop Girls 1980-1990, 100% Pure Love, Dance Pop 1991-1995, and The Other Pop 2002-2007. Required listening for any pop fan!) This succession of playlists is like a relay race, with artists from one era seamlessly passing the baton to the next. Y2K Pop is an answer to the origin of pop-as-genre, picking up where Madonna and Michael Jackson left off. By the turn of the century, pop is no longer derivative of another genre, but has unambiguously become a genre itself: ABBA was disco, but the A*Teens were pop.
“Y2K” has become a very vague term for aesthetics, music, and culture for an increasingly broad time period, so we wanted to hone in particularly on the turn of the century. 1999-2002 marked the explosion of Max Martin-esque Swedish production that would continue to define the genre throughout the 21st century (also see: Pop Strikes Back 2008-2011, aka. what is now called Recession Pop, and Reign of Pop 2012-2015, aka. the mainstream pop’s answer to indie pop’s Tumblr era). Record execs knew they struck gold with Britney Spears, and they wanted to recreate that extraordinarily lucrative circumstance as many times as humanly possible. I particularly live and breathe for the dramatic drum machines and the “wah wah wah” sound I can only describe as an onomatopoeia. It really does feel like a sugar rush.
“Record execs knew they struck gold with Britney Spears, and they wanted to recreate that extraordinarily lucrative circumstance as many times as humanly possible.”
While catchy, upbeat music marketed to kids and teens first peaked in the 60s – bubblegum pop, sunshine pop, etc. – it certainly came back in full force in the 90s (see: Groovival, my all-time favorite aesthetic). The difference here was that the sheer amount of products being sold had vastly increased. There weren’t just two boy bands, there were like, ten. (I love BSB and *NSYNC, but the fact that these insanely valuable and beloved cultural products were created as a front for a massive Ponzi scheme is the most American thing I’ve ever heard.) If Britney was a singular pop princess, there were at least 20 copycats. The upside to this is that we could experience a broader world and become invested in artists beyond the biggest stars. This playlist was actually inspired by the Nicstalgia tote I made for myself last summer featuring bubblegum pop artists of varying obscurity.
Cyclical trends, economics and politics directly shape the lens through which we consume entertainment and how music is marketed. Supply chain globalization, mass adoption of streetwear, an uptick in immigration from Latin America to the United States, and puritanical social attitudes around this time influenced the cultural landscape. The eldest Millennial girls exiting their teenage years (e.g. Britney, Xtina) would open the door to what I call Disney Pop for kids (e.g. Hilary Duff, Ashley Tisdale, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, etc.) and Bimbo Pop/Literal Trash for young women (e.g. Pussycat Dolls, Paris Hilton, Danity Kane, etc.). All of these micro-genres all somehow gets mushed under one “Y2K” umbrella, so we wanted this playlist to have a clearer POV. No one values specificity, accuracy, and obscure bangers quite like we do :) Enjoy!!
Y2K Pop 1999-2002: Spotify • Apple Music • YouTube (with music videos!!!!!!)
My triple Aquarius brain child turned 4 this week! I started Nicstalgia as a video podcast and newsletter in 2022 in my parents’ cavernous, poorly lit spare bedroom. I planned, outreached, hosted, interviewed, edited, produced, and marketed 54 episodes (!!) which is not an easy feat. (This was also before video podcasts were the norm btw.) I’d already talked about Nostalgia & Nowstalgia and , and I specifically wanted to have “deep conversations about superficial things”. Mission accomplished!
^^ Watch the Nicstalgia theme song! Music, inspired by Mikaila’s “Emotional” and Britney’s “Oops!…I Did It Again”, by Emily Gabriele. Visuals by Valentina Reyes. The very beginning is a clip of Baby Nic putting on a performance at age 3: “We’re gonna start now!” ^^
Best of Nicstalgia: The Podcast
I interviewed a lot of fun people, friends, family, and creatives whose work I deeply enjoy. Nicstalgia was some of my guests’ first-ever podcast appearance, and others went on to start their own shows, businesses, and passion projects! While the grand majority of conversations were had virtually, I had a lot of fun recording – what would be my last episode, at least for now – in person. I also had an absolute blast researching and really digging deep in my solo episodes:
Realistic 2000s Fashion (Supplementary Pinterest board here)
Unlocking Core Memories (About 90s toys and games)
My Fav Internet Era: AIM, Xanga, Myspace (This episode is how I met Adryan Corcione, because we were the only ones talking about Xanga!)
A&F: Problematic and Successful (Better than the A&F documentary tbh)
You can watch the full Nicstalgia video podacst series on YouTube here and explore the archive here or by clicking the GIF below. The GIF lives on my website that I am in the middle of coding/re-hauling. (I will try to show you the rest of the full updated site within the next month!) Most of the pics represent a topic we’ve covered on the show; click it and it leads to that episode on YouTube.
Best of Nicstalgia: The Newsletter
Though Nicstalgia in its initial form as a video podcast is a completed chapter, it has continued to grow and evolve since then. I’m really proud that I have consistently put out like, hundreds of newsletters over the last couple years. Most of them have been jam-packed (great), but they’ve also been LONG (hard to sustain). Therefore, I’m going to continue playing with format and adding more fun stuff for paid subscribers only. Here were your top 5 favorite editions:
Which vintage Hilary Duff ringtone are you? (Btw, her not inviting me to the concert and bringing me up on stage to do the “With Love” dance was a huge mistake. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.)
Nicstalgia Presents: Pop Culture Advent Calendar (a super fun website I made)
I think, therefore iMac (about my favorite movie microgenre, 2000s Comedies with Prominent iMac G3 Placement)
I only threw this party 4 u (about Gen Z waiting in line and my before-its-time, could-have-been surveillance app)
Here are five more oldies but goodies:
I’ll keep you my dirty little [Victoria’s] secret (on what I would have bought at Kathy Hilton’s tag sale, 5 things you didn’t know about Lisa Frank, and the VS swimsuit archive)
Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving (on my Anna Nicole rewatch, TTPD consensus reality, my Celebrity Age Relativity Formula, and 13 Going on 30: Millennial Edition)
Stop Being Desperate (on Coachellas I wish I went to, Paris’s fake “Stop Being Poor” shirt, and the Bottled Emotion tween to astrology girlie pipeline)
They’re Vintage Charlotte Russe Shorts (on Should Social Networking Web Sites Be Banned? (2008), Jewel’s “Intuition”, vintage Y2K, and my “Behind These Hazel Eyes” painting)
I Saw You Kiss Her (on Sock’Em Boppers Mandela Effect, Bob’s Discount Furniture drama, Limited Too cosmetics, 25 versions of Avril’s “Girlfriend”
Best of Nicstalgia: Beyond
In 2025, I did three readings IRL in NYC, had two essays published in print, presented my Physical Media Renaissance™ project at a symposium, had my collage included in an art gallery exhibition, and co-hosted a newsletter marketing workshop. I can’t wait to do more fun stuff this year! :) I have a lot of ideas and ambitions, and am trying to be patient with myself as I move toward their completion. I WANNA DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW lol, but even so, I’m really excited to continue meeting awesome writers, dancers, artists, etc. to collaborate with.
I’d like to give a special thank you to the people mentioned in the section below…you simply ARE the best. I do all of this work for free (for now…lol) and you generously contribute financially. Angels!!!!!! Thank you for being patient with me as I experiment, test, trial and error, and do the best I can while rebuilding my life, career, and creative practice literally from scratch – in a way that finally feels right for me.
Thank you for watching, listening, reading, and supporting Nicstalgia. Here’s to another four years! 🥂
Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, and Lindsay! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐
If you enjoy my interviews, essays, deep dives, and other musings, please consider supporting Nicstalgia! Your support helps me continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture. If you’d rather send a one-time gift of a custom amount versus a recurring subscription, you can also do that here!
Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆ Physical Media Renaissance™ Zine
Congrats on four years! Your content is wonderful! It really inspires me! 🥹
Finally getting to this post!! Thanks for the shout out, so grateful for the Xanga episode <3