Nostalgia and grief is the strongest tasting cocktail I’ve sipped:

The bittersweet marriage between grief and pop culture

Oct 18, 2025

My mum passed away unexpectedly two years ago, and everyday has been a struggle since. Creating @90smilk was really an ode to her: her love of music, films and pop culture was a form of currency. Growing up in poverty meant that all we really had left to feel enriched by was culture and entertainment.

My mum was what I’d describe as an alternative, whimsical, carefree, unapologetically-herself Black woman. From her love of Reggae, to Indie, to Rock n Roll and Hip Hop, she refused to be defined or boxed in. In our household, where she raised me single-handedly, she shot down expectations by society, by stereotypes, she wasn’t a monolith. One minute she was burning incense and blasting Billie Holiday and Tupac, and the next she was headbanging to Nirvana.

As a kid, I just thought she was cool. But as an adult in my twenties now, I see how revolutionary that was. To be a Black woman who took up space, who didn’t shrink herself to fit anyone’s comfort zone, who dared to be complex in a world that often demands simplicity, especially from black women. There was power in being herself in a world that doesn’t celebrate that.

Pop culture is like a shared emotional archive where memory, identity, and loss meet. Pop culture is weird now that I’ve lost my mum. Music I enjoyed, I now sometimes struggle to fully listen to. I sometimes find myself skipping songs on Spotify that remind me of my mum because I don’t want to drown in a pool of grief on that specific day. Grief is weird like that, it sneaks into everything. There are certain films I can’t fully enjoy anymore, because it simply makes me too sad.

But, it’s also why I cling to culture so tightly now. There are days I’m happy to reminisce through her favourite songs, films, tv shows. Through music, I get to feel her again. Through film, I get to see her essence. I can play certain songs and see her dancing, watch certain films and hear her laughing. Still, I know she’s in every post I make. Every playlist I curate. Every reference I throw out into the digital void. She’s the reason I see pop culture not just as entertainment, but as legacy.

I’ve realised that nostalgia itself is a kind of grief. A collective one. We all mourn the past in our own ways, not just people, but certain eras, certain feelings, and versions of ourselves. We love nostalgia because we miss who we were. Maybe that’s why pop culture hits so hard, and why we’re all stuck celebrating it, because it freezes time. A three-minute song can hold an entire memory. A scene from a film in the ‘90s and 2000s can feel like your childhood bedroom. It’s why a song from 1999 can make you cry in 2025 because it’s not just the song, it’s everything that came with it: who you were, who you loved, who you lost and how you felt.

My mum at Glastonbury festival in the 90s

Grief and nostalgia are two sides of the same coin. You don’t have to lose someone close to you to see the grief in nostalgia. We’re all grieving something. That universal ache of remembering who we were.

So I guess this piece, like @90smilk itself, is my love letter to her. To the woman who made me see that pop culture isn’t just entertainment; it’s memory. It’s resistance. It’s survival. It’s a way of saying: we were here, and we mattered.

And every time I press play on a song, I get to find her again, and feel her again, even if it’s only for three and a half minutes.