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I’ve been learning this terribly sad blues song lately ‘Georgia on my mind’ after I heard it performed by some waapa students and I’m now wondering why people love sad songs?

Admit it, we’re all suckers for sad songs. I know, most of the music I consider good quality just happens to be sad. Many of the best albums, have been dedicated  to:

  • a breakup
  • death of a loved one
  • suicide
  • The insignificance of humanity 
  • war

and I’m sure theres more.

Sad songs have been around for a while now. As long as people were sad and had a concept of music, that’s all that was needed. The first significant opera; L’Orfeo(1607), was based on the greek tragedy ’The Legend of Orpheus’, which tells the story of Orpheus going to hell to retrieve his lover, by singing to the gods. They let him have her on the promise that while leaving, he doesn’t look at her, she gets frustrated, ignorant to this, and while telling her he can’t look at her, he sees her and then she is lost forever.

Sad songs really took a big step in the Romantic period, with Schumann’s song cycles and Beethoven’s haunting symphonies. The use of dynamics really became popular, and this gave room for large amounts of expression and exaggeration.

 (taking a big jump here)

Sinead o’connor’s Nothing Compares, is constantly referred to as one of the saddest songs around. A heartboken girl sings of her lost love, and how no one else will replace him.

‘Went to the doctor and guess what he told me

guess what he told me

he said girl you gotta try to have fun no matter what you do

but he’s a fool”

Sinead’s voice sounds desperate and lost, haunting listeners that

All the flowers that you planted mamma

in the backyard

all died and went a way

i know that living baby was sometimes hard

but i’m willing to give it another try-yayaa (hit’s an uplifting major chord right here, as if to show her denial with her deluded sense of hope)

Bon Iver’s album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ was written after a breakup. The music on this album is full of harmonic genius and heart breaking lyrics sung with passion. The song ‘Skinny Love’ is made up of the magical vi-I chord progression that is so commonly used in sad songs, It’s hard to explain why this works, it could be the complete purity and happiness of the first chord (I) contrasting against the sadness of the relative minor (vi). In his song ‘Woods’, Justin Vernon layers his voices to give a sense of vulnerabilty and rawness.

Jeff Buckley’s album ‘Grace’ was voted by Australians as the second best album to date. Buckley’s music is bittersweet at it’s extreme; With his constant use of unresolved suspended fourths, leaving an empty sad feeling (‘Last Goodbye’) and his incredibly versatile voice singing with passion. ‘Hallelujah’, an existential hymn-like piece, revisits an old love and in the process, questions his faith “Love is not a victory march/It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

 

 

So why?

why listen to sad songs?

I think that people are constantly faced with sadness and tragedy wherever they go. You might see it on tv, on the news, or closer to home, and yet we are constantly expected to be happy, and if we aren’t, there are drugs that can be prescribed, prosac, anti-depressants, you name it, the list of drugs and the extent that people will go to to ‘be happy’, is a neverending list.  If we are always going to be happy, we’re never going to remember what it’s like to be sad and then we have nothing to compare our happiness with. When you listen to something like Jeff Buckly’s ‘Hallelujah, You enter a realm of bittersweet content, because you are feeling sad and at the same time, a certain happiness in knowing that you are alive and feeling emotions that are natural for people.

Forever, I am seeing things being so obviously dressed up and painted over, so that we don’t have to come to terms with sad and tragic things in life. American tv will insist that there is always a happy ending, it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a moral anymore, as long as there is a happy ending, it’s acceptable.

In amongst all the crazy shit going on in the world with envionmental and economic turmoil there needs to be some sort of hope. For there to be hope, I think there must be a certain amount of sadness and despair. For years, polititians didn’t believe there to be a problem with global warming, even with the proof from scientists, it has been inevitable that the misuse of the worlds resources, would be detrimental. However, the leaders, with the choices to be made, would remain in denial, fearing fear itself and fearing a negative attitude. There is always a way of getting around the truth, either leaving it out completely, or dressing it up, and painting over it in language that left the public feeling better. To move forward and finally hope, we have to accept and feel a certain sadness about a matter. People see sadness as a weakness and can’t cry anymore, however, if you ever remember going through a breakup, and went through a night of worrying, without letting your emotions take over, you might remember waking up feeling shit. Now compare that to the time you thought of all the worse situations and you cried yourself to sleep, you might remember you felt a whole lot better. Being sad and thinking of the worst, puts things into perspective, and reminds you that you can always feel better, especially after a cry.

Sad songs make you feel sad, hearing about other’s pain, puts your pain into perspective, and gives you hope.

you need to cry, to know what laughter really is.

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