I'm collecting songs that best evoke the feeling of the economic crisis, considered roughly from 2007-2011. To be specific, I'm looking for songs
produced during that period that seek to respond to the events, either lyrically or musically. So, I'm not looking for Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (1995), or Sixties protest music (even if these may still apply), but rather period songs from all genres that speak to the economic and social conditions. I hope you can help me out.
For my money, one of the top contenders would have to be "Bloodbuzz Ohio," by The National. You may be familiar with The National's 2007 "Fake Empire" ("We're half awake/ In a fake empire") which was a mainstay at Obama campaign events during the fall of 2008 (indeed, it was played at the election night rally in Chicago). "Bloodbuzz Ohio" comes off their latest album, High Violet, released during what may have been the very low point of the Great Recession in May 2010. The collapse of the Greek economy and other European troubles were starting to reverberate in the US, with the unemployment rate rising, and any hope for the initial stimulus pulling us out of the down slide fading. The band are Brooklyn transplants from Cincinnati, and the title of the song thus references the state that may be the epicenter of effects on "Main Street" of the Wall Street cataclysm. But it's really the repeated chorus that evokes the economic collapse:
I still owe money to the money to the money I oweThe line encapsulates, to my mind, the full confusion of the period, applying equally well to the nonsensical economic vehicles (the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that nobody could figure out) and to the debt society that had emerged, the mortgages and second mortgages and refinancings. The line then references the "house" as the site of the destruction more specifically, while metaphorically signaling the fall into poverty:
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from
Everybody I knowhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IprgVNlFIqMIf a few lines in a song capture or evoke both the feeling and logic of the era, it would be those, in my view. But I'm looking for more, so please add!