Fading Like a Flower: What happens if you copy a VHS tape 23 times?

Does your smartphone have a scratched camera lens or a cracked screen? Perhaps a year or two of forgetting your charger at home ruined the battery life. You might feel like this limits your creativity.

If you think a half-broken smartphone is problematic, consider the realities of consumer video equipment from the past. Specifically VHS cassettes.

The reality of generation loss

A VHS cassette carries a crummy analog video signal rather than digital data. Analog signals degrade rapidly with copying. This phenomenon is called generation loss. Thanks to the internet we can admire the insane result of duplicating a VHS tape 23 times.

The person behind this experiment did not pick a random toothpaste commercial. They chose a 1991 broadcast of the music video for Fading Like a Flower by the Swedish power pop group Roxette.

It is disappointing that this exercise was not performed with the famous scene from a certain Japanese horror flick involving cursed VHS tapes. Then again, watching it might be difficult.

Technical limitations and formats

One could easily disappear into the technicalities of analog video. For those from the USA, the resolution and color of this European PAL format VHS recording may actually look better than the old NTSC tapes hidden in your father’s Forbidden Closet of Mystery.

If you were born after 1995, VHS tapes likely never mattered to you. However, the results are terrifying. There is a possibility that a modern Vine video will face the 2030s with less dignity than Roxette’s cheesy helicopter shots of Stockholm.

The legacy of Roxette

Roxette’s Fading Like a Flower was a global hit and a competent pop song. While this may sound like a quote from American Psycho, the allure of Roxette’s music is real. Their Look Sharp (1988) and Joyride (1991) albums are notable. If you forgive the over-crisp production values, they have pop songs that deserve to be sampled.