"then surely the song would be your best friend"

April 24, 2019 11:58 AM

Why Do People With Depression Like Listening To Sad Music? (British Psychological Society): A new study in the journal Emotion (abstract) reports people diagnosed with major depressive disorder don't listen to sad music to maintain their negative feelings, but rather that they find sad music relaxing, calming or soothing. The research replicated a 2015 study that found people with depression had a far greater preference than controls for sad, low-energy music. However, when they heard these clips again, they reported that they made them feel more happiness and less sadness.

The 2015 study -- Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression (abstract) -- found recurring themes (British Psychological Society) in depressed individual's preference for sad music, including wanting to connect with their emotions, using the music as memory trigger, its aesthetic value and even companionship: “I felt befriended by the music,” said one of the study participants. “By this I mean that if you were to pretend the music/lyrics was a real person, with its lyrics of understanding friendship, comfort and confidence, then surely the song would be your best friend.”

Previously: March Sadness, Listening to sad music can make you feel pleasant emotions, This Will End in Tears, Data Driven Depression

posted by not_the_water (61 comments total)

Franz Schubert — 'There is no such thing as happy music.'
posted by thelonius at 12:06 PM on April 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

I always used to watch "The Wall" when I was deeply depressed. It was nice to not feel out of step with the world around me.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:06 PM on April 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

This makes sense to me. Anecdotally, I listen to angry music when I'm angry, not to sustain my anger, but to help let it out. It seems like this is kinda similar.
posted by asnider at 12:09 PM on April 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

I read, like twenty years ago, so no source, that you're supposed to start with music that represents the mood you're in and then shift towards a different mood. Apparently cops used to throw aggressive people into cells with angry thrash punk metal music to calm them down.
posted by bookbook at 12:10 PM on April 24, 2019

Sometimes you just want your music to let you hang your head on its shoulder while it says "I know, baby. I know..." over and over.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:14 PM on April 24, 2019 [28 favorites]

Dar Williams' "February" is so depressing that I will actually start giggling halfway through, which helps me out whenever I am down in the Dar-Williams-listening mood.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:19 PM on April 24, 2019 [9 favorites]

Frankly, when I’m depressed (which is pretty much always) happy or upbeat music can be very disorienting and nerve-wracking. Sad or downbeat music is just more comfortable and compatible.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2019 [8 favorites]

I always used to watch "The Wall" when I was deeply depressed. It was nice to not feel out of step with the world around me.

Although contrary to the study I will no longer listen to or watch "The Wall" because it’s a depressing reminder of a period when I was often severely depressed.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:21 PM on April 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

Only Happy When It Rains is perfect for this. Sad but also ironic and energetic about it. It's the kind of song that helps you transition from sad, commiseration music to something more upbeat.

I have a love-hate relationship with Nirvana because I listened to it nonstop during a bummer of a summer vacation as a teenager. Still love the music, still don't really want to be transported back to those memories!

Sometimes you just want your music to let you hang your head on its shoulder while it says "I know, baby. I know..." over and over.

Yup, totally agree. Sometimes I just want my music to feel me.
posted by rue72 at 12:35 PM on April 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Anyone who finds it surprising that depressed people listen to sad music must be unaware of the wonderful spectrum of sadnesses available to the human mind. If, for example, one finds oneself in a fit of self-loathing and unable to sleep, a good shoegaze record can transmute that feeling into a peaceful melancholy. When you're furious that injustice was done to you or someone you love, put on some punk and be furious that injustice is done to everybody.
posted by skymt at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2019 [24 favorites]

As one of the more prolific purveyors of sad music said, I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside.
posted by mcdoublewide at 12:45 PM on April 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

Bernie Taupin nailed it (better than any other time in his decades of ghost lyric-ing for Elton John) ... "Sad Songs Say So Much"
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:45 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Sometimes you just want your music to let you hang your head on its shoulder while it says "I know, baby. I know..." over and over.

Sometimes seeking out attunement and resonance with music is more achievable than finding them with other people.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:00 PM on April 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

For me, this has a lot to do with the fact that, when I'm depressed, listening to upbeat music - which is often louder or faster - feels almost physically uncomfortable. Like being trapped in a room where the lights are too bright, or being forced to wear too-tight scratchy clothing. Slow, quiet music doesn't give me that "someone is scraping a fork over the surface of my brain" feeling and slow quiet music is, more often than not, also sad.
posted by darchildre at 1:05 PM on April 24, 2019 [15 favorites]

Flashes me back to years ago when my sister asked me, "Do you know anything but sad French songs?"

I liked what Peter Tork said about the blues: "The blues isn't about the blues, it's about we have all had the blues and we are all in this together."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:10 PM on April 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

See also, catharsis.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:13 PM on April 24, 2019 [9 favorites]

As Henry James wrote about sad architectural vistas:

...in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers....On such occasions she had several resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain, between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it....The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.

posted by praemunire at 1:17 PM on April 24, 2019 [15 favorites]

As a sad person who listens to sad music, I don't think a handful of undergraduates listening to Samuel Barber and thirty second clips tells us anything.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:32 PM on April 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

idk if The National counts as sad music but I do know that I've listened to hardly anything else for the last few years and am getting better each year
posted by lazaruslong at 1:34 PM on April 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

As long as we are discussing this, curious to hear nominees for saddest songs. I nominate "Sam Stone" by John Prine. "There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes. Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose"...

Also, Barber's Adagio - which you may remember as the classical music piece in Platoon.
posted by jcworth at 1:37 PM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Barber's Adagio became the soundtrack for mourning in America when FDR died. Platoon turned it into a film reference, which kind of took the sting out of it.
Gloomy Sunday has such a storied past that nearly all English versions include a manufactured verse that effectively says "Only joking! It was all a dream!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:45 PM on April 24, 2019

Sad songs they say, so much.
posted by bleep at 1:45 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

The Saddest Music in the World is a pretty good movie!
posted by rhizome at 2:31 PM on April 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

I can't listen to sad music most of the time. It can take me from a totally sunny mood to a very dark one, almost instantaneously -- I mean, full-on 180 from being happy and smiling to thinking life is pointless. Sometimes I'll hear a sad song in a cafe or something, and it can ruin the next few weeks for me. I know my reaction isn't normal, but I don't know what causes it. I seriously don't understand how people can just hear sad music.

I only ever put on sad music if I'm at the lowest of lows, and by then it doesn't have the same effect -- almost like it's not effective enough. There's only the occasional rare moment that it feels cathartic, and it never feels the least bit comforting.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:15 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Automatic for the People is my sad go to.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 3:18 PM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

We should emphasise that sad music isn't just sad, it's music. That is, it's designed to have intense aesthetic qualities. If you can empathise with the sad music, your sadness is beautiful and valuable for its own sake. Not only that, but your sadness makes sense- it has order and significance- and is not merely some arbitrary affliction.
posted by leibniz at 4:24 PM on April 24, 2019 [10 favorites]

Pärt's Silentium is a good litmus test for how depressed I am. If it's boring, I'm not too depressed. If I'm too depressed, it's super eloquent and exactly as long as it should be.

Sad notes: [descend]
Me: Ha ha, yes, you do!
Sad notes: [descend more]
Me: You know it
Sad notes: [ascend?]
Me: You really think you can?
Sad notes: [descend in slightly different way]
Me: Exactly fucking right.
Sad notes: [descend in sadder new synthesis, still kind of the same way]
Me: Yes there's no escape.
Sad notes: [ascend?]
Me: Yes you have to try.
Sad nots: [descend]
Me: It's how things are.
Sad notes: [descend all alone for awhile]
Me: Even weak and alone, there is nothing to do but continue
Sad notes: [other instruments come back]
Me: For now
etc.

Though my favorite meta-depression song is Deee-pression.
posted by fleacircus at 4:28 PM on April 24, 2019 [19 favorites]

As a sad person who listens to sad music, I don't think a handful of undergraduates listening to Samuel Barber and thirty second clips tells us anything.
posted by betweenthebars

Well, that is just perfectly fitting
posted by clockzero at 4:31 PM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well, that is just perfectly fitting

It's amazing how many people think that song is the singer speaking to a girl. It's a fucking terrifying song:

People you've been before
That you don't want around any more
They push and shove but won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still


If you want to know what the last few years of my active alcoholism were like, drink a couple of bottles of cough syrup and listen to that whole album all night on repeat. You are allowed to smoke weed and drink coffee.
posted by thelonius at 4:59 PM on April 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

It's amazing how many people think that song is the singer speaking to a girl.

It's a love song that the addiction is singing to the addict.

And according to the article, you'll feel better after listening to it.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:11 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

One of the ways I know I'm having a depression episode is that I absolutely don't want to listen to anything.

Or watch or read or anything, because all that stuff was made by people that can sustain being creative and functional long enough to produce whatever this thing is that is before me to consume, and I, a being without worth, don't deserve to experience it.

All I am capable of doing in such a state trying to lie still, curled in a ball, with my eyes closed and my mind racing, and perhaps I'll fall asleep and wake up in a better state.
posted by glonous keming at 5:53 PM on April 24, 2019 [8 favorites]

A large part of depression is pretending to be fine, which is, well, exhausting. Having the mood musically tuned to your frequency instead of projecting whatever seems appropriate is grounding.

That said, there's definitely a scale where I'm like, if Vesti La Giubba is the level of musical negativity to soothe me, Other Steps Need To Be Taken.

As skymt mentions, there are a lot of ways to be sad. Other fun depression listens, with some different flavors of sad: Existential Crisis, It Must Be Me, Bronte.

if you decide to click on any of those links, Existential Crisis is by far the most amusing.
posted by snerson at 6:01 PM on April 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

My wife, who has a serious case of impression, rarely listens to music. Her depression colors her taste in TV and film. Horror, dark dramas, and true crime documentaries are viewed constantly. I have often said upon walking into any room with a TV where someone is begging for their life, "every movie you like is someone having the worst day of their life" and she says, "better them than me."

I just want to watch things with hobbits, superheroes, or Bill Murray. As you can imagine we have a hard time finding a movie/series we agree on.
posted by Ber at 6:17 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Sad Music is more interesting than happy music.
posted by ovvl at 6:58 PM on April 24, 2019

the wonderful spectrum of sadnesses available to the human mind

Sad Music is more interesting than happy music.

"Happy families songs are all alike; every unhappy family song is unhappy in its own way."
posted by carmicha at 7:45 PM on April 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

Why are horror movies so popular during war? Art allows people to sublimate anxiety and tension. Sad lyrics over a beautiful melody (or even a harsh yet invigorating melody. Thank you, NIN) allows the listener to to put unmanageable feelings into a pleasing, knowable space. A song is roughly 3-5 minutes of apprehendable space. It allows you to feel everything you've tried so hard not to feel in a safe area. To quote the bard:

The end of paralyses. I was a statuette /now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench / and when I press the chords it all gets reversed / the sound of loneliness makes me happier
posted by es_de_bah at 8:07 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

I looooove sad music. Aimee Mann and Gillian Welch are my jam (their saddest songs are the songs I love best). But I've found I have to be careful. Listening to too much sad music at once sends me into a downward spiral that can trigger a deeper depression. So I've learned to "enjoy" it in moderation, like a kind of sadness ice cream sundae.
posted by rikschell at 8:40 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

"The blues isn't about making yourself feeling better, it's about making other people feel worse."

-- Saxophone Player Bleedin' Gums Murphy, from THE SIMPSONS
posted by DMelanogaster at 8:52 PM on April 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

This study is unable to speak to why depressed people find low-energy, sad music uplifting

Too bad. This is what I'd like to know. Many of us (including those in this thread) have theories, but I wonder if any scientists/therapists/neuroscientists have come to any reasonable conclusions that we haven't yet thought of based on our common sense ideas about our responses to music.
posted by kozad at 9:02 PM on April 24, 2019

Well then, it's no damn mystery why my favorite song is Comfortably Numb.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:55 PM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

This makes sense intuitively to me. It's sort of like how when I'm depressed, I'd rather have the weather be raining and gloomy out. If it's a sunny, beautiful day, and I'm lying in bed feeling miserable, the dissonance is unpleasant. (And then I feel guilty, because I should be outside enjoying the beautiful day, but I don't want to move, etc, etc.) I've known other depressed people to express similar sentiments.

And it's the same with music. Listening to upbeat music when I'm depressed is like nails on a chalkboard. There's something validating and comforting about music that matches your mood.
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:23 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

— Rob Gordon (John Cusack) in High Fidelity.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:38 PM on April 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

I think people find comfort in doing what the group is doing and music/dancing is one of the ways we create a feeling of satisfying correctness when we're all doing the same thing. Listening to music that matches your mood gives you that feeling that you're in sync with the/a group.
posted by bleep at 10:50 PM on April 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

For me, at least, there is a corollary here: exposure to sad music while sad can make me feel happier; but exposure to comedy while sad makes me feel sadder. The funnier and better written the comedy, the stronger the effect. Sadness provides the insight to see through the shiny surface to glimpse the skeleton: and it is usually (just talk to any random comedian) not a jolly vision.
posted by rongorongo at 10:54 PM on April 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Probably my absolute favorite song is the Beach Boys rendition of “Sloop John B”, which is an incredibly upbeat sad-as-hell song.

Listening to it (and the rest of “Pet Sounds”) always makes me feel swell. That whole album is upbeat music piped out of a very dark place.
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM on April 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

The winner of Saddest Song in my own music collection is a tight tie between "Refuge" by Steven Wilson and "Dauðalogn" by Sigur Rós.

They are definitely distinctive sub-moods of Sad, and if I had to pick the one that fits the last couple years' … helpless rage, I guess? (I'm sure the Germans have a word) inspired by our hell dimension, it's the first one. The second one is more resigned and wistful.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:20 AM on April 25, 2019

This wasn't already known? I can't remember where I learned that humans mind external dissonance from their internal states and therefore sad people dislike upbeat music, etc, but until now I had assumed it was some high school psych class...
posted by Cozybee at 3:46 AM on April 25, 2019

I have a custom playlist on Spotify called Sad. I listen to it when I am sad. The Blues was created for a reason.
posted by Justin Case at 6:36 AM on April 25, 2019

I'm here for the Henry James content.

I guess it depends somewhat on the definition of "sad music," here, but when I'm depressed I usually don't want to hear "sad music"—which is to say music about being sad or music that enacts its sadness, for the sake of a better definition. And I mostly don't want to hear "sad music" when I'm not depressed, either, for fear that it'll make me sad. I dislike The Wall for precisely that reason—it's such a fucking depressing record and Christ I devote enough energy to keeping my head above water—I don't need someone trying to dunk me. And that goes, to varying degrees, for a lot of the work of all the Sad Young/Old Men—a major exception here being Bob Mould's Workbook which has been key listening-while-depressed music for thirty years.

But generally, if I'm depressed and want to hear music, then I want something sort of quietly chill & pleasant—Balearic, Bossa Nova, Ambient, or Modal Jazz-y—or defiant—Patti Smith & Workbook are go-tos here—or just white noise or enviromental sounds if I'm going full fetal position.

The most depressing record? Yuri Morozov - Human Extinction.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:19 AM on April 25, 2019

Probably my absolute favorite song is the Beach Boys rendition of “Sloop John B”, which is an incredibly upbeat sad-as-hell song.

Yes! I love this song for exactly this reason, and also because it reminds me of an especially calamitous, rum-drenched sailing excursion my dad took us on once, that ended with us nearly getting hit by an enormous, very slow moving tanker (our engine wouldn't start; no breeze for the sails; captain was drunk) and ultimately getting rescued by the Coast Guard at midnight.
posted by Aubergine at 9:08 AM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Aimee Mann songs help me because they tell me "fuck yeah, other people are absolutely thinking the same dark shit as you are," but also the music itself can be upbeat/catchy in contrast, so it's sort of a stealth way of cheering up.

Also she's a fucking badass lyricist and that in itself is cheering. Yeah, Aimee, you tell them, more eloquently than I ever could, you awesome sadass bitch.
posted by emjaybee at 2:29 PM on April 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

idk if The National counts as sad music but I do know that I've listened to hardly anything else for the last few years and am getting better each year

The National absolutely counts as sad music, are you kidding me. They have a whole song called Sorrow! Which is excellent wallowing music what with lyrics like these:

Sorrow found me when I was young
Sorrow waited, sorrow won
Sorrow, they put me on the pill
It's in my honey, it's in my milk

Anyway, The National is my sad music of choice because there's usually a hint of sly self-awareness in their music's sadsack ways, a wry willingness to indulge in both the absurdity and the inevitability of sadness. There's something inviting in that, and the music itself is lovely enough to keep you from sinking too deep into the doldrums.
posted by yasaman at 4:08 PM on April 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

Happiness is a sad song.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 8:50 PM on April 25, 2019

"The whole world loves a sad song
That they don't have to sing"

— X, "Hot House"
posted by kirkaracha at 11:33 PM on April 25, 2019

Previously on MetaFilter
Previously-er on Ask MetaFilter
posted by kirkaracha at 11:38 PM on April 25, 2019

There is one song that I find too sad even when I'm in the mood for sad music. I haven't been able to listen to it in years.

Live performance of "Les Vieux" ("The old ones"), by Jacques Brel

French lyrics

The English lyrics written by Mort Shuman for Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris are a pretty decent translation.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:07 AM on April 26, 2019

yasaman, I agree on the National. I tend to like their pre-High Violet stuff specifically because it was so much funnier. Always gallows humor, but laugh out loud gallows humor. They kept a bit of if moving forward, but for me there's nothing quite as heart-breakingly cheeky as Alligator.

I think that's really a clue to the larger point: humor is important in this equation. Even the basic act of putting a sad thought into rhyme and setting it to music relieves tension. The innate joy and humor of music and rhyme which lets your brain know we're still playing a game, even if the subject matter is heavy. Our brains find rhymes amusing just an order of magnitude below a pun or word play, which are also almost always worked into lyrics. Throw a proper joke in here or there and it's just divine. It's cathartic, and it reminds you that you're still alive in the midst of despair.

I think of Tori Amos's "Me and a Gun," which is about as dark and sparse as a song can be [like a song by Suicide without any droning accompaniment.] But she still works in a joke about Mr. Ed. It doesn't undercut the fear, resentment, or pain in the song. It makes them clearly human. Music can bring you down to the depths of misery, but it can't leave you there.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:44 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

i came to The National late, with Trouble Will Find Me. There's definitely a founder's effect there, I adore that record. But yeah the older stuff kicks ass too, and the occasional 'happy' song (e.g. All the Wine) still has the complexity to make me feel nourished.

finally got to see them live for the first time last year on my 35th, very excited to see them again in June on the tour for the new (and as yet unreleased, though a couple songs are out and I love them) album
posted by lazaruslong at 10:48 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

'All the Wine' is satire, no? Taking the piss out of one's own mythology? Casting oneself as an over-stuffed male 'hero' in the horror genre is not an optimistic thing. It's the girl that survives to the end.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

lazaruslong, I'm seeing them tonight, and I'm so excited to hear all the songs from the new record!

And yeah, I think Alligator is probably the funniest and cheekiest of their records, but I think Boxer has its own understatedly funny charms. I was listening to the Coffee and Flowers podcast where they go track by track discussing Boxer, and while I liked the podcast, I was kind of surprised to find the hosts didn't find some of the songs as wry and funny as I did! "Guest Room", especially, which is, yeah, about a couple having relationship problems, sure, but which has a knowing sort of humor to it.

I guess I just think The National's output is way funnier than people give it credit for, or maybe than seems apparent given Matt Berninger's rather mournful baritone, but there really are some laugh out loud lines in some of their songs. Like I think "Slow Show" is devastatingly romantic, but the line "I leaned on the wall, the wall leaned away," still got a laugh out of me.

I think that quality of humor or slyness is what really turns sad music into the kind of thing you can feel "befriended" by. There are other artists and songs that I think are far more sad, and correspondingly, I don't listen to them as often. Because, like, The Antlers' Hospice is a beautiful record but also, it is practically emotional terrorism, it's so sad. Music that's that sad is for catharsis, not for company, you know?
posted by yasaman at 11:08 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

From an old "changelog" on my old geocities. (emphasis,mine)

Aug. 27, 1998---

Negativity, boyz'ngirlz, that's what I'm feeling right now, and I really hate it. I think it's about that time of year when it kicks in... The "depressarific" state of mind(note: I didn't coin the wonderful word, but a friend of mine did. If you've ever felt depressarific, then you know what I'm talking about) Well, though I may not feel the 'rific' part right now, I know I did the other day.

There's multiple levels to depression, and that holds for "depressing music":
Some days you need something quiet... Dark, and mellow... possibly resonant like a cave. Stars of the Lid, Autechre's Amber, Einsturzende Neubautens later work, or maybe some protoGoth like Velvet Underground (I mean, what goth doesn't love the feel of velvet).

Some days you need something full of angst, and pain, sorrow and anguish, some days you need Joy Division, NIN (so help me god, I went there), Skinny Puppy, and (so help me god I'm going here...) Grunge.

Some days your so tired from the darkness you just want to sleep, in an ocean of static, white noise, a fan, the background hums of computers, the blow of air from a cpap machine, a staccato blip of a heart monitor. Even to the incessant drone of death metal blastbeats.

Some days you feel so sad you want to cry, you hit the bottom and come to the top for a brief moment, peek out the other side, then fall back to drown in the waves. That's the Cure. (and now that I think... Helter Skelter. God I'm so unoriginal).

Anyways, uh, hopefully that helps explain the various phases/approaches to depressing music and why we might just prefer it over more "happy" (and frankly when you're depressed? more annoying probably. YMMV.
posted by symbioid at 8:29 PM on April 26, 2019