By Katie Asha, First Year English
Festival lineups brim with DJs, pop stars borrow rave aesthetics, and tours like Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s SWEAT transform arenas into something resembling a warehouse at 2am.
But why particularly now does it feel like we are in a renaissance of dance music? And how does this resurgence correlate with the state of our current political climate?
Let's start by defining ‘dance music’. At its simplest, it means exactly what it sounds like: music made for the dance floor. It's an umbrella term and is made up of a multitude of ever-diversifying genres, but has a few distinctive variables:
- Tempo: typically between 110–130 beats per minute, creating a fast, danceable pace
- Rhythm: a consistent 4/4 beat (‘four-on-the-floor’)
- Hooks: simple, repetitive lyrics often associated with happiness or escapism
- Electronic production: created using digital instruments and electronic techniques
The Relationship Between Dance Music and The Economy
Dance music’s popularity typically correlates with periods of economic recession – most famously during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, in which club music frantically rose to popularity during the economy's most sudden crash to date.
The dance-centric music of this time subsequently became known as ‘recession pop’. Vice says 'a recession banger means to offer your listeners a place of escape within your music, turning every party into an extravagant, maximalist club experience even if you’re broke.'
While the phrase ‘recession pop’ feels distinctly modern, the phenomenon itself is anything but new. Historically, dance music has always been used as a means of escapism in times of adversity. Jazz music rose to popularity as a direct response to the Great Depression of the 1930s; disco music saturated the airwaves in the 1970s amidst violent struggles for civil rights; synth pop was born in the 80s during the emergence of the AIDs epidemic as well as economic inequalities widening in both the UK and US.
Do it all again…..
There’s no denying that dance music currently dominates the global musical landscape. Festival lineups are saturated with DJs. Pop’s biggest names — from Dua Lipa to Beyoncé — have leaned heavily into dance and club-adjacent sounds.
The 2024 SWEAT tour, led by Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, transformed arenas into rave-like spaces and became the most Googled tour in the US that year. 'The average tempo of 2020’s top 20 best-selling songs is a pulse-quickening 122 beats per minute. That’s the highest it’s been since 2009,' wrote a music reporter for the BBC amidst the beginning of dance music’s return to popularity.
Although the UK is not technically experiencing an economic recession, the nation is living through what social scientists are dubbing a polycrisis: a situation in which multiple different societal instabilities overlap (inflation, job insecurity due to AI developments, political uncertainty, the effects of climate change, the continuing repercussions of the pandemic), resulting in a population unable to craft a clear idea of what their future will look like.
In contrast, when the economy was stable during the late 2010s (with slow but steady growth and record-high employment rates from 2015-2019) dance music’s popularity dropped: slower, more introspective songs took centre stage – think along the lines of Billie Eilish’s 'when the party’s over' and Harry Styles’s 'Sign of the Times'.
While it might seem strange or ironic that charting music tends to act as an antithesis to the public mood, in reality it makes sense: as doubt about the future develops, people increasingly look to pop culture to lift their spirits; and in times where people feel stable, secure, and happy, they can afford to indulge in slower and more reflective songs.
'I'm looking at the top 20 now and, if you were to play the chart in order, you wouldn't think the world is going through a crisis,' says UK star Raye.
Music becomes more focused on immediacy: raising the listener’s spirits for one night, or even just one song.
The Dancefloor Was Always Political
Dance music has predominantly marginalised music to thank for its development: disco, house, techno and drum and bass all emerged from queer, Black and working-class communities, particularly in spaces where mainstream society offered little safety or belonging. Dance music as we know it today is inseparable from these communities: disco music provided a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community of New York in the 1970s, with popular clubs such as The Stonewall Inn being both founded and popularised by queer people of colour seeking community; house music was born out of Chicago’s predominantly black nightlife scene; and jazz emerged from African-American communities in New Orleans. All these genres of dance music have shaped the clubs as we know them today – and Bristol’s own drum and bass history, shaped by Black British artists like Roni Size, reflects this lineage.
Dance Music Is ‘Back’, But It Never Left Bristol
Ultimately, dance music has been a constant force — particularly in Bristol — since its conception. The fact that it now receives mainstream validation from already wealthy, predominantly white pop artists does not mean it was previously irrelevant.
However, its current popularity is genuinely unprecedented and notable; and as it spends another year lurking in our Spotify Wrapped, we have to question what it is about society that makes people so eager to lean on dance music for their daily hit of dopamine.
As Amanda Kiefer states succinctly in The Current – 'one way to investigate the state of society is by turning on the radio.'
Featured image: UnsplashAre you in favour of a Harry Styles-inspired dance revival?
