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Late last year, a reporter from one of the big UK newspapers called and asked if I thought that tough times produced darker moments in pop music. I told him that I thought it was the reverse - when you look at the popular music of the Great Depression, the World Wars, the months after 9/11 - you find a lot of frothy, escapist songs. Even the 60s, which we think of as a particularly good time for political awakening in pop, saw its pop charts topped by "These Boots Are Made For Walking" and "Yellow Submarine," while a song like Dylan's "Masters of War" struggled for any airplay at all.

Of course, there are exceptions. One of the great songs of the Depression was "Brother Can You Spare A Dime," which presented a sentiment that most Americans could identify with. But it gained popularity and has endured as a kind of icon of the times because lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney did something more than just create a song that mirrored the times: they created a great song. With all due respect to Neil Young and Prince and the rest of the gang, I haven't yet heard a great song about the economic crisis.

There are a number of country songs, raps, and rock tunes that refer to the bailouts and the bonuses, and the housing market and the bulging deficit. But being topical and being musical at the same time is apparently a tough thing - most of these songs sound like whining or hectoring to me. Young's "Cough Up the Bucks" has some good lines, but it's not a song we'll all be singing 25 years from now. Neither is Prince's "Ol' Skool Company."

Tom Paxton, the veteran musical satirist, has ironically made a career by being aware of exactly this problem, even creating a series of what he winningly calls "Short Shelf-Life Songs." His 1979 tune "I'm Changing My Name To Chrysler" has now been changed to "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae." It's still a topical song, with some funny bits, but it raises the question - why does it have to be completely recast to be relevant today? That's the thing about "Brother Can You Spare A Dime," or any of a hundred other really good songs about poverty, about seeing the promise of the American dream recede: songs like this never seem to be irrelevant. Unfortunately. That's because they're about putting a human face to a big and apparently intractable problem. Harburg's song would probably not resonate so well for so long if his lyrics weren't about the Everyman who worked hard and has nothing to show for it, but instead lambasted FDR's early attempts to deal with it, or the complained that the WPA funneled money to artists when there were steel workers starving.

So yes, angry songwriter, we share your bitterness at the inequality of the bailouts and way the burden of fixing this mess falls on the backs of some of those who had the least to do with causing it; but the more specific you are in name-checking Detroit auto makers or failing multinational insurance giants, the sooner your song will become a time-capsule novelty.

Tell us: Have you heard any really good songs about the current economic crisis? PLEASE share them if you have. What about great songs of the past that transcended the problems that spawned them?
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