Signs of the Econapocalypse, Part II: The Resurgence of Swing

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Yesterday, Nicole McClelland pointed out that there appears to be a direct relationship between tie width and economic prosperity, as well as indications that both hemlines and lipstick sales rise when finances fall. It got me to thinking: what other cultural trends might correspond to recessions? Glancing around the iTunes Top 100, there’s one recent pop music phenomenon that may be a candidate: the swing, or “shuffle” rhythm.

Okay crazy, you’re thinking, big band hasn’t exactly taken over the pop charts. Indeed, but stay with me: I’m just talking about the meter. In swing rhythms, each beat is separated into triplets, rather than 8th or 16th notes. Most pop music falls into the latter category, but every once in a while you get a track with swing: Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2,” for instance. However, recently, there has been a barrage of straight up pop hits utilizing the swing rhythm: Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” Britney Spears’ “Womanizer,” Pink’s “So What,” and the current #1 song in the U.S., Flo Rida’s “Right Round,” which manages to add a swing rhythm to the robotic Dead or Alive original. (Listen to these tracks below). This is in addition to alt-rock tracks by Seether and Panic at the Disco, and even a new strain of underground drum ‘n’ bass that uses swing time, something almost unheard of in electronic music.The shuffle rhythm is far more common in jazz, and of course, the heyday of swing jazz and big band just happens to correspond to the Great Depression. Oddly enough, there also seems to be a brief resurgence of swing rhythm during another recessionary period, the early ’80s: witness Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule The World,” Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night,” Blondie’s “Call Me,” Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.”

So, what about good years, is there less swing? Turns out, quite possibly: I went through the entire Billboard Top 100 songs of the stock market peak year of 2000, and found not a single swing rhythm song. Not one! And I listened to all the ones I didn’t remember! In contrast, 1981’s Top 100 has a total of 11 tunes with an unmistakable shuffle, from John Lennon’s “Just Like Starting Over” to Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster.”

Could swing’s jaunty, lilting style have an easy, comforting appeal to a downtrodden populace, a direct line to deep inner happiness centers of our brains, like the face of Shirley Temple? Sure, it seems a little weird, but honestly, it makes as much sense as the tie thing. We’ll see if we can get a grant to have a team of interns graph the history of music and compare it to historical GDP and get back to you.

Britney Spears – “Womanizer”

Flo Rida – “Right Round”

Pink – “So What”

Pendulum – “Another Planet” (swing section starts at 2:38)

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate