The fifties boom is a clear example of the cultural phenomenon we call retro, defined by the music critic and historian Simon Reynolds as “a self-conscious fetish for period stylisation (in music, clothes, design) expressed creatively through pastiche and citation.” Where customs, traditions, classics, and canonized works involve a continuity of historical survival, retro describes a historical revival—a sudden reevaluation of transient artifacts and conventions. Unlike the high-culture rediscovery of forgotten genius or Renaissance obsessions with mythical golden ages, retro is the ironic use of kitsch from the recent past as novelties. “The retro sensibility,” writes Reynolds, “tends neither to idealise nor sentimentalise the past, but seeks to be amused and charmed by it.” While classics possess a near permanent cachet, retro grants new status value to discarded conventions. Before Sha Na Na, youth viewed 1950s vocal pop as goofy and embarrassing—silly songs with nonsense lyrics and simple chord changes that predated the rise of real music like the Beatles and Bob Dylan. But Sha Na Na’s ironic appropriation made doo-wop desirable again. Retro established an additional way for the past to take on new value in the present: nostalgia masquerading as innovation for use in the fashion cycle.