Penniless Pop Stars?

[deguspice]

The theme for the crossword puzzle in Sunday's Boston Globe is pop songs from 2013. I don't listen to pop music any more, so I had no idea what any of them are. So when Ann and I found that the answer for the "#1 Billboard song in 2013" is the song "Thrift Shop", I pulled it up on my phone to listen to it.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/macklemore/thriftshop.html

Hey, Macklemore! Can we go thrift shopping?

What, what, what, what... [many times]

Bada, badada, badada, bada... [x9]

[Hook:]
I'm gonna pop some tags
Only got twenty dollars in my pocket
I - I - I'm hunting, looking for a come-up
This is f**king awesome

Another popular song in 2013 is Lorde's "Royals", another song about not having much money.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lorde/royals.html

My friends and I—we've cracked the code.
We count our dollars on the train to the party.
And everyone who knows us knows that we're fine with this,
We didn't come from money.

This got me wondering, what's changed in the pop song world, that songs about being broke are making it to #1?

Edit: I think people misunderstand my questions. It's not "Is this tread of singing about being broke new", but why have pop stars recently switched from writing hedonistic songs about:
"Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash."
to performing songs about being broke?
(it's seven years since the start of the recession)

Comments

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I... hear there's been a bit of a recession on?

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I don't know which came first rap stars buying Cadilacs or them rapping about them, but now Caddys are cool.

There's a whole industry of marketing people providing high end products for free to rappers with the hope that they'll mention them in a song or use them in a song. But in Lorde's song "Royals" she's going against that trend.

"But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,
We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair."

So why are these songs hitting #1 now and not five years ago?

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

When were these songs written? Or others like them? What sort of songs were being written/released 5 years ago?

It might be a chicken and egg situation, where art is imitating life imitating art...