Economic recession rivals suburbia and rain as one of the major fomenters of great music - so while your house price slides and your food bills climb, console yourself with the thought that at least there are going to be some really great records made during this credit crunch. It's just you won't be able to afford to buy them.

But what kind of music does a recession spawn? Music rating website TheFilter.com would have us believe that the sorry state of the economy has sent us all off in search of misery; a study recently conducted by the site found that "more of us are choosing downbeat and dreary tunes as our favourites, rather than happy, feelgood numbers." They cite the Smiths' 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now', Coldplay's 'Trouble', REM's 'Everybody Hurts' and Radiohead's 'How to Disappear Completely' as examples.

Certainly, economic downturn has borne many dirges - Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens', for example, was a surprise hit shortly after the housing slump of 1990. But when we think of "recession music" I suspect we are largely thinking of music created during a period that covers the winter of discontent in 1978/9 and the miners' strike of the early 1980s, which did indeed bring us some magnificently angry and miserable music, but also the New Romantics and, shortly afterwards, acid house.

In truth, times of financial glumness often incite flamboyantly escapist music, as well as misery; while the bestselling song during America's Great Depression was Bing Crosby's version of 'Brother Can You Spare a Dime?' and the era also inspired many of Woody Guthrie's dust-bowl ballads, the same period brought us 'We're In the Money' and 'Happy Days Are Here Again', not to mention the upbeat tunes of big band and swing - think of it as the acid house of its day.