- "This song is an oldie ...but, uh ... *pause* Well, it's an oldie where I come from."
- —Marty
An oldie was a song or piece of music that was over twenty or thirty years old. The term was used since the early 1930's to refer to a song or story that used to be popular long ago.
History[]
When Marty McFly introduced "Johnny B. Goode", he started to say it was an "oldie but goodie", a variety of the term "oldie" which appeared in the mid-1960's, but realized that it would not make sense to people in 1955 since they had never heard the song before.
References[]
Chapman, Robert L. (1995). "Dictionary of American slang" (3rd ed.). New York: HarperCollins. pp. 231, 400.