These days, it seems like anything could be a recession indicator. Press-on nails. Strip club habits. Lena Dunham’s exodus from New York.

But how do we really know if there’s an impending economic contraction? “There’s a super wide variety of what qualifies as a so-called ‘recession indicator’ on the internet,” Wall Street Journal markets reporter Hannah Erin Lang told me in the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast. “Economists and investors are often looking at these offbeat sources of data or offbeat trends. Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan famously looked at sales of men’s underwear with the idea being that if you have to cut back, this might be a place where nobody else is going to know but yourself.”

There’s another alleged recession indicator taking the internet by storm: music. People are now referring to the late-aughts and early 2010s dance hits as “recession pop.” But is there any credence to this supposed harbinger of economic downturn? That’s the question posed to Switched on Pop cohost Charlie Harding on this week’s episode of Explain It to Me.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on

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