Party in the (Downwardly Mobile) U.S.A.

With every passing year, Miley Cyrus’s 2009 single “Party in the U.S.A.” comes to feel more like an artifact of an empire before its fall.

When the Disney Channel star sang about hopping off the plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan—on the way to turn her country-girl ambitions of fame into Hollywood reality—she projected an image of a nation that still believed in its own myths, trusted its power centers, and grooved together to the same songs.

The guitars fizzed like a fresh can of Coke, and Cyrus advertised to the world’s strivers that making it in America is a breeze.

Released less than a year after the 2008 financial crash, “Party in the U.S.A.” was part of a crop of songs that have, in recent years, been labeled “recession pop.” It’s an affectionate term for happy, uncomplicated anthems—think Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” or the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”—that once distracted from headlines about bailouts and foreclosures.

The optimism of those songs now seems rarer in American life, but over the past few years, TikTok pundits and media commentators have theorized that a new wave of recession pop might come “back” to suit the economic weirdness of the mid-2020s. [ Read: Is this the worst-ever era of American pop culture? ] I’ve never really bought that argument, for a few reasons.

Perky pop largely faded from the charts in the mid-2010s not because of the national mood but because of changes in how people listen: Streaming eroded the top-down distribution channels, such as radio and network TV, that loved to broadcast sugary, universally appealing sing-alongs.

More audience-segmented styles—country, hip-hop, confessional bedroom songwriters—now rule the charts.

So-called pure pop has become a subculture , almost akin to indie rock.

And what’s been happening lately in that subculture is more interesting than a mere revival of carefree times.

This summer has served up a slate of great party songs that are full of twisted nostalgia and tarnished glamour.

Pop is dancing in the ruins of the American dream—or at least in the ruins of the traditional record business.

“Party in the U.S.A.” came to mind while I was listening to “ Ain’t in LA ,” a tasty new single by the rising star Adéla.

She is a 22-year-old Slovakian musician who learned English by watching Hannah Montana , and the song is an obvious Cyrus homage.

It revisits the trap-pop sound of Cyrus’s 2013 hit “We Can’t Stop” and features that song’s deep-voiced rapper, Theron Thomas.