A kung fu fighter in a disco

I know! I totally turned to

boyofbadgers and said "hang on... that *is* a ukelele isn't it?"

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martinv.livejournal.com

- Yes
- The amount is similar, but I also listen to much more non-miserable music so the balance has changed dramatically
- It really depends. Generally though, the opportunity to listen to a different palette of pretty sounds and emotions to those offered by the non-miserable music I listen to.

I listen to very miserable music only rarely (I'm talking here about, say, Portishead, or something like Bright Eyes) and usually when I'm in a bad mood. Don't know whether it does anything good or bad, but usually seems like a good idea at the time.

Lots of the music I listen to which is ostensibly miserable isn't actually miserable at all. At least it doesn't make me feel miserable. (Malcolm Middleton is the example that's springing to mind here - perpetually gloomy lyrics but due to a combination of melody and occasional humour - always makes me feel happy.)

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That's a good point! Miserablist doesn't always necessarily = serious minor key stuff.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

I dare say I do (and I'll certainly be buying the new Portishead) but its miserablist elements wouldn't be the reason why. That's always been the case, I guess. I liked Pink Floyd a lot in the 70s and the Smiths in the 80s, but not because I wanted to wallow in the misery Waters and Morrissey were offering.

heh, this (http://everything2.com/e2node/Miserablism) made me ~~miserable~~laugh, esp. the mention of Tegan from Doctor Who.

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

surely NO ONE listens to as much miserable music as they did when they were a teenager?

although, this of course depends on viewpoint, eg:

teen me: oh morissey, you're SO RIGHT about EVERYTHING, i feel your PAIN

now me: oh morissey, you silly old queen

even when it's the same song...

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Viewpoint thing: when I was small I treated I Love You Baby by The Original as a miserable song about my unrequited playground love.

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(is it I Luv U Baby, even?)

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

hurray, you win at internets today :)

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surely NO ONE listens to as much miserable music as they did when they were a teenager?

It's just possible I actually listen to more - my teenage years I remember as being very much about classical music and punk, grunge & riot grrl. And BIG goff power pop stuff.

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I find a (not massive, but clear) difference between *melancholy* and *miserable*. Miserable is feeling sorry for yourself (ie music you listen to to make yrself feel worse!). Melancholy = 'omg this song is so sad because it reminds me of X', eg I'd class 'Halcyon' as melancholy as makes me cry when I think about their mum doing the washing up. Miserable on the other hand = listening to the same angry techno track over and over & working myself up into a state.

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- Not really any more
- Much much less
- Erm I guess when I was a teenager, a sense of emotional resonance?

I mean as miss_newham says I don't like it b/c it makes me miserable, and I'm not miserable in that way any more. Which is why I haven't listened to the Portishead album very much! With music like that, and Tori/PJ etc at their angstiest, you have to be really invested in the emotions they're hurling at you.

I do listen to a lot of sad/wistful/melancholic music, esp when I'm hungover or it's depressing outside, eg Junior Boys, Superpitcher...a lot of it is instrumental though, which means that the sadness isn't the only element by any means, though as Anna-Marie wrote about Akiko Kiyama (http://www.thelipster.com/articles/3140719), all minimal is secretly emo. Actually that kind of vague, unspoken sense of dread is something which crops up in a lot of my favourite pop as well - Cassie's 'Me & U' and All Saints' 'Black Coffee' spring to mind.

Listening to big emotional pop ballads like 'No Air' and 'We Belong Together' is more of a theatrical thing than immersing yourself in the unremitting bleakness of Portishead, they make you identify with the emotion without actually making you miserable. I guess the bleakest music I listen to on the regular is probably dubstep or something, doomy instrumental stuff.

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Basically I listen to 'down' music now to soothe myself, to sort of cocoon me in a holding position until the hangover clears/the rain stops/whatever, rather than any I-feel-your-pain shrieky angst.

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Yes - a lot of my emo-minimal listening is done on the tube/bus (ie vaguely oppressive situation that requires soothingness). This is partly why I asked the 'teenager' question, as I'm a lot less angry/lonely these days ('cos nobody loves me it's truuuue' doesn't really apply any more!) but to make up for it I'm a lot more anxious/stressed!

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yeah when you grow up you realise that there are so many more ways to be miserable than just the one stock nobody-understands teenage one! (you also understand that it really isn't the end of the world anyway, hurrah.)

also I totally agree with you about Beth sounding exactly the same: I think this may disturb me more than anything else, actually, because I'm just thinking...wow, in 10 years, has your life really changed so little that you're still this unhappy? I mean I guess she probably isn't, it's performative, but she really is convincing.

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Perhaps her emo-ness now stems from frustration @ not releasing an album for so long :)

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freakytigger.livejournal.com

Haha I thought it sounded much more performative then and more convincing now. In fact when I heard her vox on P3 I thought "see, the wind changed and you DID get stuck like that!"

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I think her latest vocals sound *slightly* more gutteral than on Dummy but less so than on Portishead (saying that, I haven't listened to the earlier two for blimmin' ages - perhaps it's just the overall production I'm mapping her voice to?)

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This is actually totally right! Cuz thinking back to Dummy the bleakness was leavened when she purred or crooned or did ~jazzier~ stuff as opposed to the blues, and all of that has disappeared.

I never thought 'Sour Times' was that depressing, I mean the full lyric is "Nobody loves me, it's true / Not like you do".

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Having another listen now. I've worked out what's bugging me - P3 is way less hip-hop, more random electronica. The beats underneath aren't reeling in the widdley-woo like they should be.

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Yeah - I'm impressed that on the first couple of listens they actually convinced me that they hadn't changed at all. I only realised that, like, all the arrangements were completely alien and different later.

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I never thought 'Sour Times' was that depressing, I mean the full lyric is "Nobody loves me, it's true / Not like you do".

Seconded. I found it soporific rather than sad.

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freakytigger.livejournal.com

I can't think of anything I listen to that makes *me* miserable - what would be the point?

I often like listening to sad songs though, and I like pop which has an edge of melancholy or misery or bittersweetness.

When I was a teenager I used to relate to misery sometimes, like everyone, but the thing that's changed most is that I don't relate much now to anger at the world for misery: the sad songs which move me now are ones involving regret, or disappointment, or lost potential. Which are obviously feelings most adults can relate to, sometimes at least, though if they obsessed on them the way emo kids obsess on favourite tracks they would go mental.

My favourite acts, like ABBA, are often very good at the above two things. (So is Glenn Campbell who I was listening to last night!)

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I can't think of anything I listen to that makes *me* miserable - what would be the point?

This is an excellent question to which I wish I had the answer! I dunno... sometimes there's just this inner bit of yr brain which is in a permanent sulk, and needs appeasing every so often. My method of appeasing has definitely changed over the years, instead of angry spiky indie/rock it's now doom-techno like the Lex mentions above. Mellower but more menacing.

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mcarratala.livejournal.com

"I don't relate much now to anger at the world for misery"

To me this has always been the dividing line between sad personal music, which I like a lot, and cosmically gloomy music – Floyd/Radiohead/Joy Division – which I have never been that keen on. From what I've heard, the new Portishead stuff, like later Massive Attack, is drifting into the second category. It's where the apocalyptic sci-fi/1984 (and what a truly awful, overrated book that is) bollocks kicks in...

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I probably listen to a lot more music that is downbeat in feel than when I was a teenager, but nothing that's quite as miserable as some of the things I listened to back then either. I don't hit the same extremes, if that makes any sense.

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cis.livejournal.com

my brother still tells the story of catching me turning to the radio and saying "of course no-one loves you, you're a right miserable get" or words to that effect. (i still tell the story, too, i wonder if i've mentioned it at poptimists before)

I'd like to think that I spend much less time listening to abject music these days but then I did spend a great deal of the past week lying on the floor listening to an alt.country e.p. about the lead singer's girlfriend breaking up with him*. so, you know. Sometimes it's necessary: on hot days, with the window open and the curtains shut, like a cold beer, a mild depressive, gentle and calming.

A lot of the stuff I listened to as a teenager that was labelled 'miserable' I didn't think of as such: I used to get annoyed at the whole 'music to slit your wrists to' image because for me Radiohead for example could be uplifting as much as a downer, it depended on the song and the time.

* american aquarium, 'bones', out now, etc.

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Tom mentions ABBA above, though my mental summary of ABBA is 'boingy-boingy-Sweden!' happy rather than 'lets sing cheerfully about divorce!' sad - they have an extensive enough back catalogue to not really fall into happy/sad artist groups. If that makes sense. But who else? I don't just mean 'oh this is their ballad', but the really heart-wrenching stuff that is kind of atypical. All I can come up with is:

Spice Girls - Goodbye
Steps - Deeper Shade Of Blue

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And Steps had One For Sorrow! That's pretty doomy too.

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sbp.livejournal.com

What, "Goodbye my friend, we'd like to stab you in the back but it would look bad"?

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Er, and 'Tragedy'?

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

I like it because it's good at what it does and I appreciate that? Also, though I can let it in and let it relate to things in my life that suck, and have a good old WALLOW, but then I have ways and means of climbing out of that anyway ftb I am actually able to live a life most of the time. If there was a super-emo song about poor time management then maybe I'd have to steer clear of that one.

Also I never heard Beth Gibbons as sounding anything other than bored white girl.

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sbp.livejournal.com

Also I never heard Beth Gibbons as sounding anything other than bored white girl.

You're listening to it wrong then.

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sbp.livejournal.com

a) no. unless see c)
b) I didn't when I was a teenager either. It was either '80s pop, '80s heavy metal, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton or the Shadows.
c) well I guess the blues counts as mis music, but Mr Clapton kind of sanitised it and rockified it.

But in my 20s I liked Portishead.

From:

koganbot

When I first heard "Sour Times" I said to myself "this will take a couple of years to figure out what I think of this." And then promptly forgot about it, so I still don't know what I think of it, though it's a very well-constructed song, as I recall. But I think what I found problematic about it wasn't its misery - which I may not even have noticed, at least not as such - but what I perceived was its intense stylization. Which is to say that the music seemed very controlled.

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koganbot

No one wrote better lyrics that articulate what it feels like to be jerked around by love than Holland-Dozier-Holland did. And I have run to the Supremes when being jerked around by love. But I can't imagine anyone listening to "You Keep Me Hangin' On" in order to augment a feeling of melancholy - more like to feel exhilaration. A friend of mine would have me bring my Supremes anthology whenever she gave a party so that we could play "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and "Love Is Here And Now You're Gone" back to back, one reason being that they're excellent dance songs but also each has a break where the music stops and Diana speaks her anguish. So when the breaks come all the dancers stop their dancing and start miming hilariously as if they're heartbroken heroines from the silent films.

From:

edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com

- Yes.
- Probably about the same amount but, as

martinv said, I listen to more non-miserable music in addition to it so the balance is different. I definitely listened to more crap miserable music (Sarah McLachlan, the worst of Stevie Nicks, etc.) back then, though.
- Mostly to be all "UGH THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL," but actually it is useful -- if I'm in sort of an amorphous bad mood and can't figure out why, miserable music focuses it a bit.

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miss-newham.livejournal.com

Tsk, where is

hoshuteki in this thread? He listens to miserable music for fun!

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mostlyconnect.livejournal.com

Yes.

Yes - I listen to a lot less music nowadays but about 30% now is Cat Power or Bright Eyes or the old all Girls Aloud Ballads-only playlist or similar, I didn't listen to this stuff at all as a teenager 'cos it did nothing for me.

The ballads are for when I am kinda fragile, the misery is largely unimportant but there's almost no happy stuff at that emotional pace. Cat Power and Bright Eyes are a bit different, I find the force of how strongly they feel (and also Conor's way with words and phrasing etc) totally inspiring and level-up inducing?

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piratemoggy.livejournal.com

I listen to a lot of miserable music; one of my friends asked me for a happy playlist the other day and I just looked at the songs I sent her. They were basically all horrifically depressing- even the music I like that sounds slightly jollier (my favourite genre is still 'emo in disguise') is fairly bleak.

I do listen to less flat-out total misery than I used to (JJ72 really shocked me with how bloody unrelentlessly miserable they are) but I don't actually like happy music, I don't think. I find it abrasive, not because I'm a total and complete miserabilist but because it just seems rather... err, clumsy isn't really the right word but a bit blunt to me. I think I'd be very, very hard-pressed to think of genuinely totally happy songs that I really love.

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I'm not sure how you're defining 'miserable' but I'm a goth, so my answer will basically be yes to pretty much any definition you want to use.

I don't always find things that other people find 'depressing' to be depressing, however, and often mind those same things to be quite uplifting. When I do enjoy things which are maudlin, I find them very good when I'm already sad - to me, they're as useful and necessary a form of catharsis as 'angry' music is, and I like a lot of that too.

But obv, one of the reasons I'm here is that I like music which isn't overtly 'miserable' as well!

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petronia.livejournal.com

Same here - my music taste is pretty gothy in its fundaments (I was into IDM and minimal way before I was able to listen to funky house) but I think of myself as a more-cheerful-than-average personality, and I find stuff like Joy Division or the Cure or Morrissey/the Smiths to be uplifting, not depressing/miserable. Like, I hate that freaking Wombats song because it makes dancing to Joy Division out to be an ironic activity. Bitch plz, "Transmission" and "She's Lost Control" are totally unironic dancefloor fillers where I come from.

When I actually am feeling miserable I either listen to low-energy music like ambient or weird-folk, or loud/angry music, depending on what needs to get done. But "angry music" is the category I generally avoid and can't relate to, rather than "miserable music". (I actually sometimes wonder if there's a divide between dopamine-pathway-dominant people and serotonin-pathway-dominant people, in this sense - I have a vague anecdotal sense that this maps onto drug preferences as well.)

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