Taylor Swift performs at the Taylor Swift | The Erasu Tour at the National Stadium in Singapore on March 2, 2024.
Ashok Kumar | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
A line from Taylor Swift’s song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” from her latest double album, The Tortured Poets Department, struck a chord with listeners: “I cry a lot, but it’s very productive. It’s art.”
Beyoncé, who has spoken out about worker burnout before, also touched on the current blues on her album Cowboy Carter, singing in the song “Ya Ya” that “a man who works hard, ain’t no money in the bank.”
One 2024 TikTok hit, “Looking for Men in Finance,” also captures some of the increasingly widespread feelings of frustration and financial vulnerability.
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“Looking for a man in finance”
“I cry a lot, but it’s very productive. It’s art.”
Economists are troubled by the widening disconnect between the current state of the economy and how people feel about their financial situation.
Experts say we’re in a “recession.” Some people on TikTok have gone a step further, even describing the current mood as a “silent recession.”
If we look at popular music, we can see a resurgence of what became known as “recession pop” about 16 years ago.
“We’re all feeling very pessimistic about our financial situation… but this music gives us a glimpse of something to look forward to,” says Casey Lewis, a social media trends expert and founder of the trends newsletter After School.
Recession pop primarily refers to music that emerged during the Great Recession, which began in late 2007 and lasted for 18 months.
The recession pop boom is a “curatorial act,” said Charlie Harding, adjunct professor of music at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development and co-author of “Switched on Pop: How Popular Music Works and Why It Matters.”
“This is people trying to make sense of something that was just nonsensical that happened to them,” Harding said. “There were a lot of songs that became the soundtrack to that era.”
In contrast to the country’s economic situation at the time, Joe Bennett, a professor at Berklee College of Music and a forensic musicologist who specializes in analyzing popular music and songwriting, calls this period “the era of Katy Perry’s biggest hits.”
“I think about the 2008 recession and the music that was on the radio at that point: Katy Perry and a lot of hyper, really fast music,” Lewis said. “It’s very dance-pop.”
Recording artist Katy Perry performs onstage during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show at University of Phoenix Stadium (now known as State Farm Stadium) in Glendale, Arizona on February 1, 2015.
Kevin Mazur | WireImage | Getty Images
The songs that dominated the charts, including the Black Eyed Pea’s “I Gotta Feeling” and Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” were “party anthems,” Bennett said. “It was all about dancing and having a good time, as opposed to the actual economic situation.”
“These were feel-good songs that got us through tough times and were the medicine we needed,” Bennett said.
Diane Negra, professor of film studies and screen culture at University College Dublin, said consumers have tended to favor upbeat tunes during times of economic uncertainty since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
“There’s a cliché that music is faster, brighter and more comforting in difficult times,” she said.
Harding says that music can mimic and respond to larger trends, with the 1980s being a good example of this, a time of high inflation and economic decline that also saw the birth of subgenres like house and techno.
“Any great recession or major economic upheaval can affect everyone, but it doesn’t affect people equally,” Harding said, pointing to the rise of hip hop and country music, among other genres that speak to the economic hardships experienced by different groups.
Now, Americans are returning to the escapist hits of more than a decade ago. In a July 19 Google Trends email, analysts noted that searches for the term “recession pop” had reached an all-time high, with Katy Perry and Charlie XCX becoming the top trending related artists.
According to Google, the first surge in search interest for Katy Perry occurred in 2008, during the last US recession.
But today’s economy is very different: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at a record high. American consumer confidence is only just beginning to ease after years of battling inflation. And the unemployment rate has been below 4%, a near-record high, for 30 months.
But regardless of the country’s economic situation, Americans are feeling the pain of rising prices, with various reports indicating that many Americans have used up their savings and are now turning to credit cards to make ends meet.
“There’s a bit of a disconnect between the actual state of the economy and the economic situation of young people,” Lewis said. “It’s painful to hear economists say, ‘Actually, things are better than they’ve ever been.’ That tension has given way to the shock of the recession.”
According to some reports, the economic situation is worsening, with young people especially suffering.
“The relationship with capitalism is especially tense right now,” Negra said. “Power and resources are hoarded by older generations, and the way young people avoid economic disaster is to rely on their parents.”
More than half (52%) of Gen Zers between the ages of 18 and 27 say they don’t earn enough to live the life they want, according to a recent Bank of America report, and nearly as many say they rely on family for financial support for things like food and rent.
“The current resurgence of recession pop that we’re seeing reflects social distress, particularly among young people, and a distrust of corporations and the economy that they have in many ways inherited,” Lewis said.
The current political and economic climate encourages escapism of various kinds.
Diane Negra
Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture, University College Dublin
Homeownership has become one of the most powerful levers of wealth creation since the coronavirus pandemic began, and people who have been priced out of the housing market have a disproportionately hard time achieving the same levels of financial security, according to Brett House, a professor of economics at Columbia Business School.
“This is a huge challenge for Gen Z wealth accumulation,” he told CNBC recently, and he sees no signs of improvement.
Home prices and mortgage rates remain high even as economy-wide inflation has fallen significantly from its peak. There is a low supply of homes for sale, and much fewer affordable first-time homes.
“Today’s emerging adults want to feel and create a situation of crisis, even though society is telling them there is no crisis,” Negra said.
Hence the resurgence of recession pop.
“The current political and economic climate is encouraging many forms of escapism, and recession pop is one form of it,” Negra said.
