Shut up and dance: recession pop for the new era.
Reflecting on nostalgia, reinvention, and embracing the rose-colored glasses.
artwork by Greta Serniute.
Recently, it seems like you can’t tie your shoes in the morning without someone telling you that double-knotting your laces is a recession indicator. Eggs, makeup styles, and skirt lengths are all harbingers of doom. “Recession pop” is maybe the most famous; valid economic theory or Tik-Tok trend, there’s something kind of party-killing about imbuing the wonderful era of 2009 pop—fun, trashy, spontaneous, messy—with economics.
Further, the conversation on recession pop often begins in 2009 and ends around 2014. But that’s hardly America’s only brush with economic disaster. The Great Depression, beginning in the late 1920’s and only resolving by the early 1940’s, is synonymous with struggle. It brought about the end of the 1920’s Jazz Revolution, but in the 1930’s, a new kind of music emerged from emptying jazz clubs and struggling dance halls. Big band jazz and swing music was loud, exciting, and made for parties. America’s public fell over itself for innovations in instrumentation- including the electric guitar- and genre, led by trailblazing jazz icons like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller. Big Band lent itself to groups that amplified their music to larger audiences at parties and created a wider array of sound. At a time of heightened racial tension, Benny Goodman’s racially integrated band was one of the trailblazing crown jewels of American music, popularizing swing nationally and internationally. America didn’t just dance and sing—it survived.
I have a confession; this article is not really about what is or is not a recession indicator. This article is about music’s lovable ability to give us exactly what we need when we need it, and our timeless inclination towards artistic innovation. In hopes of avoiding non-statements like hope in our darkest times and otherwise, my thesis is this—in music, there is something more than escapism; there is something more than survival. There is the slow transcendence of the present condition. We document our pain and demand better. What’s more, we watch ourselves as we become the better.
That’s “recession music” at its best. Unpretentious, representative of its community, joyous, and fun.
“YA YA” - Beyonce
“YA YA” is an uncategorizable song on an album that is viciously defiant against categorization, biting back ill-fated attempts to confine it to “country pop” or “soul.” Expectation actively harms the listening experience.
This song is the perfect bridge from the escapist swing of the old to the recession EDM-infused pop of the new. Opening on a sparse track, Beyonce purrs over snaps and an acoustic guitar, introducing us to her show performed at a rodeo chitlin circuit—a collection of venues across the southern and midwest U.S., operational from the 1920’s through the 1960’s. These were often the only venues that offered a performance space to black performers. This song isn’t just nodding to history, but is foundationally grounded in it. Beyonce sings, “Wildfire burned his house down/ Insurance ain’t gon’ pay no Fannie Mae,” referring to the nickname for the Federal National Mortgage Association, a New Deal government program issuing mortgages to potential homeowners. Beyonce is nothing if not a researcher. “Hard workin’ man ain’t got no money in the bank,” she laments, right out of a 1930’s blues song. The fingerprints of dance-pop and the themes of the 2000s get their moments in lines like, “Turn up the vinyl and the radio” and “I just wanna shake my ass.” Exciting, joyful, and wonderful, “YA YA” is a musical wormhole, showcasing the deep roots of country, soul, and pop, all enmeshed in just under five minutes of excellence. We got over this song far too quickly.
“Rush” - Troye Sivan
More laid-back than other songs in this list, “Rush” is laughing gas straight to the nostrils. The pulsing drums reverberate under Sivan’s electronically swelling and ebbing vocals to create a song that’s both stirring and smooth. If you’ve never heard this song in headphones before, please do yourself a favor.
The bridge dissipates into a thin smoke, and, in an expertly delivered setup and payoff, builds into a wonderful chorus of chanting men as Sivan thinly muses in response, “it’s so good, it’s so good.” It’s sexy in the playful manner characteristic of 2000’s pop—nothing is serious, but you are so desperately necessary. Dance-pop music is manufactured by nature, and it’s at its best when it nails that synthetic sound. “Rush” leans in and executes the style with a precision that lends the song a transformative and irresistible effect.
“Von Dutch” - Charli XCX
“Von Dutch” is bombastic, energetic, and braggadocious, cutting emotional lines from artist to listener in favor of arresting electronic instrumentals and Covergirl energy. “I’m your number one, yeah, it’s so obvious,” she chants, a battle cry that would fit right in the catalogs of other 2000’s pop legends on this list. The instrumental is both messy and precise, hypnotically corkscrewing over XCX’s vocals to set a club scene that is outside of time and space, covered in glitter and doused in sweat. XCX’s most recent pop run has been marked with the artist’s demonstrably intelligent ear for storytelling and instrumentation—“Von Dutch” is a clear standout on an album of wonderfully fun, painstakingly constructed musical experiences.
“Boom Boom Pow” - Black-Eyed Peas
“Boom Boom Pow” is so lovably of the era (“I’m so 3008, you so 2000 and late”) that it has an odd eternal quality to it; nostalgia has no expiration date. And those lyrics are only supplementary to a deceptively simple, but genuinely smart instrumental that takes the song from insipid and nonsensical to pop cornerstone. The repetitive drum line sets the foundation to add and subtract different tracks, giving the song a feeling of progression. We go to a shout-sung bridge that climaxes in a rapid almost-chorus and finally dissolves into a more recognizable drum set. It’s cinematic and unique—the complete disregard for pre-choruses and verses gives the listener the picture of looking over the producer’s shoulder as they mix on the fly. The song is made to be mixed in the club, but that very quality has a playful tone of authenticity and charm: which may be why the song is so nostalgic to this day.
“LoveGame” - Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga’s dominance in the 2000’s can be somewhat overstated (Lady Gaga’s “Applause” vs. Katy Perry’s “Roar”, anyone?). But rather than serving as a knock against her, her later-stage fame and the consistency in her artistic storytelling have proven her a visionary and one of the most influential pop artists of the last thirty years. “LoveGame” is gritty, dark, and near-abrasive; Gaga’s performance is more spoken than sung, acting as a percussive instrument among a series of other similarly percussive-sounding electronics. She drags her voice along the instrumental, an artistic choice that, combined with the others mentioned, would be impossible to pull off for less talented artists. There is a universe where “LoveGame” is an absolute failure; it is not this one. From the pre-chorus to the chorus, the repetitive lyrics blend into a hypnotic melody without losing the essential heavy quality of the song, playful while also tinged with Gaga’s wonderful signature robotic creepiness. Inextricably weird, essentially Gaga.
“Time of Our Lives” - Pitbull, Ne-Yo
This song has been highlighted as a masterpiece of recession pop, despite being released in a time of relative economic success. But if the shoe fits—Pitbull the multimillionaire popstar sings “This is for everybody going through tough times—believe me, been there, done that” and “I knew my rent was gon’ be late about a week ago/I work my ass off/I just can’t pay it though,” before throwing his hands up and throwing a party. You can find that ridiculous, but honestly, this was the most valuable contribution he could’ve made—no one writes a party song in the 2010s like Pitbull. Ne-Yo delivers a fantastic second-man performance in both backing vocals and main track, mixing with a simplistic beat and harmony to compliment Pitbulls’ characteristically staccato (but entertaining) performance. It’s only recently that I remembered this song has a bridge, where the instrumental almost entirely drops out and Ne-Yo is left by himself to muse about how “Everybody goin’ through something.” The solution? Pour it up, drink it up, and in the words of Pitbull, remember that every day above ground is a great day.
edited by Neha Modak.
artwork by Greta Serniute.