Songs for the Student Loan Struggle

In the United States, where over 43 million people carry more than $1.7 trillion in student debt, it’s no wonder that the crisis has made its way into the bloodstream of American music. Across genres—hip-hop, punk, folk, pop, indie, and beyond—artists have given voice to the quiet desperation and loud frustration of a generation who bought the dream of higher education, only to find themselves overworked, underpaid, and perpetually in debt. 

Student loans aren’t just a financial burden—they’re a cultural trauma. They delay marriages and children, block homeownership, exacerbate mental health struggles, and fuel cycles of economic precarity. For many, they are the symbol of a promise broken. Music has become one of the only honest mirrors left—naming what politicians won’t and exposing what marketing campaigns obscure.

Few songs capture this generational malaise as directly as Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out.” In one of its most pointed lines, Tyler Joseph sings:

“Out of student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the latter.”

The lyric, delivered like a casual aside, cuts to the heart of the matter. The dream of adulthood has been replaced by nostalgia for childhood. Treehouse homes—imaginary, fragile, idealized—are preferred to the very real pressure of loans that never seem to shrink. The song became an anthem not just because of its catchy hook, but because it gave voice to a shared longing to escape a system that feels rigged from the start.

In folk and Americana, the tradition of protest lives on through artists like David Rovics, who sings candidly about capitalism, debt, and the false promise of meritocracy. Anaïs Mitchell’s “Why We Build the Wall,” from Hadestown, offers a parable of entrapment that mirrors the moral logic behind lifelong indebtedness—“we build the wall to keep us free,” the characters insist, as they cage themselves in the name of security.

Hip-hop, born from systemic exclusion, has long offered some of the most unflinching commentary on education, class, and race. Dee-1’s “Sallie Mae Back” is a rare moment of triumph—his celebration of paying off his loans is joyful, but also revealing: the milestone is treated like beating a boss in a video game, an exceptional feat in a system designed to trap. Meanwhile, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, and Noname have all touched on the disillusionment that comes from pursuing education and still being locked out of wealth and opportunity.

In the indie and emo scenes, debt doesn’t always appear as a headline—it’s in the background, a persistent hum of dread. Phoebe Bridgers’ ballads of suspended adulthood and unfulfilled expectations capture the emotional aftermath of investing in a future that hasn’t arrived. Bright Eyes’ early 2000s work resonated with disaffected students who already sensed that the system was cracking. Their songs are not about loans explicitly, but about what loans represent: being stuck, being lied to, being tired.

Punk, true to form, skips subtlety. DIY bands across the country scream out titles like “Broke and Educated” and “Loan Shark Nation” to crowds of kids who know the words by heart. These songs aren’t just cathartic—they’re organizing tools, naming the shared betrayal of a generation taught that college was a way out. Instead, it became a life sentence.

Country music has added its voice too, quietly but powerfully. Artists like Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers have used old-school storytelling to critique modern economic realities. Their characters are often trying to make ends meet in a world that seems designed to keep them down, and college debt is one of many invisible fences. Kacey Musgraves, in her ballads of broken dreams and gentle rebellion, speaks to the emotional toll of chasing a version of success that was never really for us.

In pop and R&B, the mood shifts but the themes remain. Lizzo’s affirmations of self-worth have become survival anthems for those trying to thrive despite systemic sabotage. Billie Eilish, with her whispered melancholy, captures the numbness that often follows years of grinding toward a goal that keeps moving.

Even instrumental genres reflect the weight of education debt. Jazz musicians and conservatory-trained artists emerge with six-figure loans and few stable jobs. Their music may not name the debt, but it carries its echoes—in the tension, the improvisation, the repetition of unresolved progressions.

Taken together, these songs form a shadow archive of student debt in America. This is not a playlist of protest songs in the traditional sense, but a collective cultural record of what it feels like to be promised opportunity and handed obligation. To be sold a degree and saddled with interest. To be told to work hard, only to discover the rules were never fair.

Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” may have sounded playful on first listen. But for many borrowers, that line about choosing treehouses over loans is all too real. It’s a cry for retreat—but also a quiet act of rebellion. It reminds us that the system has failed and that we are not alone in feeling crushed by its weight.

Let the music play. Let it say what policymakers won’t. Let it remind us that while the loans may be individual, the struggle is collective—and the chorus of resistance is still growing louder.

[Editor's note: A 2019 version of this article is here.]

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Playlist: Songs for the Student Loan Struggle

1. Stressed Out – Twenty One Pilots

2. Sallie Mae Back – Dee-1

3. Why We Build the Wall – Anaïs Mitchell

4. Brackets – J. Cole

5. Alright – Kendrick Lamar

6. Broke and Educated – DIY punk band (Bandcamp)

7. Kyoto – Phoebe Bridgers

8. Landlocked Blues – Bright Eyes

9. Call to Arms – Sturgill Simpson

10. High Horse – Kacey Musgraves

11. Truth Hurts – Lizzo

12. everything i wanted – Billie Eilish

13. Guillotine – Death Grips

14. Everything Can Change – David Rovics

15. Good as Hell – Lizzo

16. We Are Nowhere and It’s Now – Bright Eyes