Sad Songs

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Where is the line between the music whose sadness you enjoy and the music whose sadness you don't?

What is the saddest song you can listen to? And the saddest song you can't?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I don't like self-satisfied sadness, the kind of stuff with the massive subtext of "oh look at me aren't I SENSITIVE"; and I find that there's a strain of sadness in pop which makes me want to snap "oh man up, ffs" at the singer.

I love overblown pop which wallows in its sadness (NO AIR); especially when it's of a really abject, undignified, here-is-my-heart-spilling-on-the-floor bent (eg Mariah Carey's 'We Belong Together'), because that's the kind of shit I don't even like to think to myself let alone say out loud, and there's something really brave and amazing in being that publicly abject. Songs which do this need to be quite dramatic to pull it off. I also like sadness which is disguised as something else - where it's not the overt focus of the song but it lurks beneath it; you get this in Kompakt-esque techno a lot, and also in complex, conflicted songs like Beyoncé's 'Irreplaceable'.

Also there's the really bleak, dark stuff like Portishead or Scott Walker, which I love and admire but can't listen to very often.