3.2Dazed
Culture Critic [Freelance]
Feature analysis on pop, economics and digital culture for Dazed.
I wrote a culture feature for Dazed examining the revival of “recession pop” and why dance-floor escapism is returning during today’s economic precarity. Blending cultural criticism, music history and social observation, the piece explored how artists like Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Kesha and Katy Perry are reshaping the emotional landscape of 2020s pop.

The article contextualised the trend through the 2008 financial crisis, TikTok discourse, intergenerational burnout and shifts in online identity formation. The tone balanced cultural theory with accessible storytelling—connecting personal nostalgia, internet humour and political fatigue to broader economic cycles.



Selected Copy [Excerpt]
We are entering what some online commentators call a ‘Silent Depression’ – an age marked by an inability to call things as they are, despite truly dire financial circumstances, so it makes sense that we’re seeing this reflected in our music. Periods of recession have typically always been defined by music with faster, frenetic melodies and a hooky lyricism, colouring economic hardship with relentless optimism (think the Great Depression of the 1920s, which saw the popularisation of blues and swing, or the UK’s Winter of Discontent across the '70s and '80s, which ushered in punk and disco).

The recession pop (essentially, dance pop) of the 00s and 2010s is hyper-commercialised and distributed at internet speed—from Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)” and Kesha’s “TikTok”, to The Black Eyed Pea’s “I Gotta Feeling” and LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem”, major record labels wanted you to forget about your money troubles by partying non-stop. It was the era of sharing your hot pink iPod Nano earbud playing “Like a G6” with your bestie on bus, trying on liquid leggings and gladiator sandals to the beat of “Just Dance”, and touching up your nude MAC lipstick in the club bathroom to “Sexy Bitch”. Every night was the night, and tomorrow always promised a clean slate. This campaign lulled us into a dissociative stupor—a perpetually peppy hangover—marking what Diane Negra, professor of culture studies and co-editor of Gendering the Recession, calls “a fulcrum moment after which many people rewrote the terms of their engagement with capitalism.

Young people today are arguably more aware of inequitable structures than ever, yet they feel increasingly powerless, stuck in cycles of shame and outrage perpetuated by the media. Post-pandemic, this generation has moved into what Negra describes as “a new profile marked by extremely high rates of anxiety, despair, and despondency.” In short, many of us don't have enough money, time, or mental strength to bender away our blues in the carefree way most dance music requires.