The sports documentary event of the year plots the tale of Michael Jordan’s rise alongside hip-hop’s. It also invokes feelings from the past at a time when we need them the most.
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TheThe power and reliability of nostalgia makes Hehir’s and Chung’s jobs easier. “It was almost selfish the amount of music I put in there because I just love these songs so much and they remind me of listening to them with my brothers and friends, and these things blasting out of a boombox when I was a little kid,” Hehir says. “But I did not expect for so many people to have shared that exact same experience with their friends and family, and their boomboxes back when they were kids.” Chung says they flirted with the idea of having contemporary artists cover classics. They made the correct decision to avoid that, as it would’ve undercut the potency of the songs they selected. “[Jason] wanted this thing to almost be like a time capsule,” he says. “I think that was the right choice, because part of the reason people have really responded to the show and to the music is the nostalgia factor.”
“It’s sparking nostalgia and making people think, ‘I miss that right now.’ At this time, anything is great to get us through this.” —Kay Gee
The Last Dance is an intriguing look at one of the biggest stories in sports’ history, but there’s no doubt that its inherent nostalgia is a key element of the response to it. With people forced to quarantine for the sake of self-preservation, many are finding collective solace in not only the things they enjoy, but small liberties they perhaps took for granted in the pre-coronavirus days.
The Last Dance’s mission was to combine sports and music in an effort to encapsulate the era, but that adopted a different meaning when “normal” life came to a hard stop in March. In a time of severe doubt, fascination with the past has become an area of security. “I think people are watching and seeing that, and it’s sparking nostalgia and making people think, ‘I miss that right now,’” Kay Gee says. “At this time, anything is great to get us through this.”
“I’ve heard a lot of feedback from friends whose kids are playing youth-league basketball who are just as riveted by this series as their parents,” Chung says. “And I think that’s a really powerful thing: The timing of the appeal of Jordan,
Jordan Brand, basketball, and the lack of sports is kind of the perfect storm for the series.” In addition to inspiring numerous debates,
The Last Dance’s arrival is adjacent to certain discussions that won’t go away. The Jordan versus Kobe versus LeBron argument. If certain players would thrive in different eras. Whether Drake is a more prolific hitmaker than Jay-Z. “I think that while people are yearning for nostalgia, I think there’s also comparisons between sports today and different eras,” Chung says. “So I guess, in a way, it’s not just nostalgia, which is cool, but it’s also kicking up a lot of conversations about the differences between then and now.”
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That’s because nostalgia is a shelter. “It’s a safe, warm, comfortable place for people to go back to, and sports are such a way of connecting with people,” Hehir says. “That’s the most important aspect of sports fandom: connection. Whether it’s with your family and friends, or if it’s with strangers. High fiving a stranger next to you at a game or giving the guy wearing your team’s hat a nod. That’s how we connect with people through sports. There’s a fundamental lack of connection, globally, right now.”
The Last Dance, Hehir says, serves as a remedy without feeling like medicine: “I think that, of all moments in my lifetime, this is when nostalgia is relied upon the most to make us feel better and to give us a momentary escape from a very scary time.”
All of the music featured in
The Last Dance aims to establish a connection. “You’re at a party and you get to grab the aux cord and play your song, and it resonates with other people around you, and they give you a head nod like, ‘That’s a good choice,’” Hehir says. “Basically, I’m grabbing one giant aux cord and plugging it into the boom box that is this documentary and trying to get people to give me that nod that acknowledges they love this music, too. That’s a way of connecting strangers: through art.”
Still, Hehir insists he isn’t holding a torch for old-school hip-hop despite his relationship with it. “This was a nod to the people from that generation,” he says. “To say, ‘This, to me, was anthemic music for a pivotal moment in pop culture to see the rise of this team and this one superstar.’ So it was certainly done in hopes that the people who were alive then will connect with it, but if new fans want to connect with this music and their eyes are opened to the greatness of it, then fine. But I don’t even begrudge younger kids if they think current hip-hop is better than old hip-hop, because I felt that way 20 years ago.”
The music of
The Last Dance charts hip-hop’s leap from nascent art form to the brink of its celebration as a dominant genre while Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls secured their place in history. It embodies the nostalgia that has become a safe form of escapism during the pandemic. We have little choice but to engage with the past for entertainment right now because the future seems bleak.
Julian Kimble has written for The New York Times
, The Washington Post
, The Undefeated
, GQ
, Billboard
, Pitchfork
, The Fader
, SB Nation
, and many more.
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