Over the course of a week, I saw three shows– Bruce Springsteen at Nats Park, the movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Weezer at The Anthem– that all induced varying levels of nostalgia for me.

Bruce Springsteen is a long-time favorite of my family’s and I last saw him 12(!) years ago in Philly. Springsteen’s music itself leans heavy on imagery and nostalgia, but never to the detriment of a hopeful vision of the future. His shows reflect this well– there’s a core group of songs that he typically plays on a given tour, but there’s a lot of changes around the margins from show to show. The pure energy he brings is unparalleled: everyone can get something out of them whether you know every word by heart or have never even heard of the guy.

I don’t have the same affection for the movie Beetlejuice as I do for some other movies of that era, but I have distinct memories of watching it as a kid. I rewatched the original a few days before going to see the sequel and it’s just as deliciously weird as I remember it. But this sequel just completely missed the mark– it wasn’t bad–but it could have been great! I kept hoping for a movie that focuses on just how forever death is and how thus how little meaning time has. Which could be perfectly encapsulated by Beetlejuice himself! One of the strengths of the original was how little the character of Beetlejuice was in it– but the sequel couldn’t resist showing him within like the first five minutes.

My brother was the bigger Weezer fan and though the Blue Album was a bit before my time, the Green Album was on complete rotation during high school. As a person who still listens to albums as a whole, it was impossible for me to pass up hearing a band I really like play what is definitively their best album. But the show was designed around a schtick: Weezer is here on Earth and they need to board a spaceship to “voyage” (i.e., play some of their other material) to the “Blue Planet” (i.e., the section of the show where they play the Blue Album).

So three shows– all rife with emotions and memories from my childhood–why did Springsteen work when Beetlejuice and Weezer didn’t quite hit the mark?

There’s a half life to what nostalgia can provide. No matter how well something is crafted, there’s a limit to how good it can be if it doesn’t introduce anything new or fresh. Springsteen realizes this: he used earnestness, spontaneity, and inclusion in addition to nostalgia to put on an amazing show. And while Beetlejuice and Weezer weren’t just pure nostalgia– there was more they were trying to do– they leaned heavily on quirkiness to fill the gaps that nostalgia couldn’t.

Nostalgia itself is not a bad thing– there’s a lot to be gained from reflection on positive memories. But in our age of everything old is new again, there has to be more than reflection: there has to be introspection of how the things from our past defines the us of the present.