It’s 9 p.m. in London’s Soho Theatre when the evening’s sold-out headliner takes the stage.
“We’re sitting here together on the cold floor of the school hall,” intones James B Partridge as he strides past an array of vintage 1990s props: a school desk, a Furby, a xylophone, and a Tamagotchi. “The smell of yesterday’s school dinners is hanging in the air,” he continues.
Then the elementary school music teacher sits down at an electric keyboard and plays his first notes.
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Nothing says social cohesion quite like a theater full of British millennials singing along to the hymns they all learned in elementary school assemblies.
The crowd of 30-somethings in front of him goes wild.
The U.K.’s fragmented school systems have one common anchor point. All state-funded schools in England and Wales must offer a daily act of collective worship, in most cases of a “broadly Christian character.”
It’s this requirement that has seen generations of children sing together, usually from the same small repertoire of Christian hymns and secular celebration music. It’s not just a core childhood experience – it is one that spans social, geographic, and economic divides. And now, thanks to social media, school singing is experiencing a second life as a nationwide millennial nostalgia trip.
In the Soho Theatre, a cheer goes up each time Mr. Partridge starts up a new song, whether it’s a Victorian-era Anglican hymn like “All Things Bright and Beautiful” or the gospel-inspired “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“It connects, doesn’t it? Everyone has that anchor back to their childhood,” an audience member named Dom tells me.
A collective chorus
If you went to elementary school in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, then your mornings probably started like this: Your class would be shepherded to the school hall, a space that usually doubled as the gym and dining hall. You’d sit in rows, cross-legged on the floor, while a teacher passed on an inspirational message of the day.
Then, you’d start to sing.
In a nation where singing is usually confined to soccer stadiums, these elementary school sing-alongs are a rare fragment of creative expression and unity. They are also a common bond.
The same journey to the assembly hall happened whether your school was private and fee-paying, selective and religious, or state-run and open to all. Whether you excelled in the classroom or hated it, singing was nonnegotiable – and eagle-eyed teachers were quick to catch anyone attempting to mime their way through.
Perhaps that’s why British elementary singing has had a social media revival in recent years, with millennials collectively reliving their childhoods on their Instagram feeds.
This new wave of nostalgia for elementary school singing started during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Mr. Partridge began uploading videos of himself playing songs for his elementary school students during lockdowns. Those videos started to go viral, and when the offline world reopened, a new genre of themed school singing brunches and parties sprang up.
Mr. Partridge has now built a part-time career from the phenomenon, including playing elementary school hymns to hundreds of people at the U.K.’s iconic Glastonbury festival. Meanwhile, a Christmas edition of his tour late this year has more than 30 dates and includes theaters that can seat hundreds.
In one sense, nostalgia is simply an easy market. “Give me a cheer if you grew up in the ’90s,” Mr. Partridge shouts at one point in his set. The whole room goes wild.
But there’s also a ravenous demand for easy escapism. “When I saw some of the clips on TikTok and YouTube, there were so many … childhood memories that came back,” says Dom, who is here with his brother. “It’s as simple as that. There’s no deeper reason other than a bit of reminiscing and probably a little bit of silliness.”
Millennial cringe
Despite school singing’s Christian connotations, most in the crowd say they are not religious. One audience member, Aarthi, tells me that she found it difficult being one of the few non-Christian students at her school. “But I still love these hymns – the fact that we know all the lyrics and it’s embedded” in people’s minds, she says.
“Even though religion can divide, there’s something about hymns – the rhythm, the lyrics – I actually have really positive memories associated with that aspect of Christianity and religion, which I didn’t necessarily experience in other ways,” she adds.
Yet behind the earnest lyrics there is also a wry, self-deprecating streak of irony. There’s a shared acknowledgment in the room that a group of 30-somethings meeting in a basement to sing childhood hymns is hardly the epitome of cool. “This is a safe space,” Mr. Partridge reminds the crowd on several occasions.
That reassurance is hardly needed. People clap, shout the lyrics, and perform dance moves with unbridled gusto. (A family friend who attended a different school singing event warned me that mass dancing had broken out at her show. “Dancing isn’t my cup of tea,” she said, “but everybody was joining in the same. I didn’t feel self-conscious.”)
In embracing their nostalgia, millennials are acknowledging that the world has moved on. The mantle of being young, trendy, and self-aware has been passed to the Gen Zers dancing in the bar above.
Downstairs, the show finishes with a rendition of the 1980s praise song “Shine Jesus Shine,” before the audience makes its way back outside, where school singing-themed merchandise is available at the theater shop. On the tube home, I listen as fellow concert-goers dissect the setlist.
Millennials may not be cool anymore, but no one here seems to care.
