WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO FEEL BETTER YET
Sitting in the dark listening to Telomeres by Sleep Token, I realised I needed to cry. It sounds stupid, I just have so much going on behind the scenes at the moment and it’s really getting to me. Complications surrounding the person I like romantically and miss so very much, family drama I feel like I have no control over and constant pain and exhaustion from my disabilities… the pressure has been building and it wants to come out in it’s usual way, through my choice of music.
I thought hey, I can’t be the only one to purposefully listen to sad songs to help them to cry and get this stuff out? Let’s write about it! I’m sure half of the people reading will think I’m completely mad and the other half will be nodding vigorously.
When I’m upset and feel like this, Mum often tries to get me to listen to something happy and uplifting, she knows when I feel low because I have a complete soundtrack of depressing and melancholy tracks that I go to specifically. Not to alert everyone around me, although I’m sure it’s helpful for them to know they need to RUN! Ha! But to push through the floodgates and cry a good cry to relieve the pain a little.
When I find the right song, tonight it seems to be Let Me Leave by Currents, I stick it on repeat and can’t listen to anything else or they have to at least make me feel a similar way, until it’s out and I’ve passed through and I can then go back to listening to Boss Ass Bitch etc.
It’s definitely a journey and I feel entirely worse when I first start listening to sad songs, almost by osmosis the pain of the lyrics and the sadness of the song fills me and eventually, I cry. It’s a deliberate act, I know it’s going to absolutely destroy me in the moment, but that’s what I’m looking for.
Crying to music can feel so much more freeing than simply trying to “pass through it” for one, my body doesn’t work like that, it just builds and builds in me as a physical ball of stress and depression until it starts spilling into everything and I need to cry just to get it out.
There is a real difference between a song just sounding sad and being able to relate to it, I need the lyrics to understand the specific kind of sadness and the reasons behind it and to feel genuinely understood in that moment, even if the artist intended it to be about something else. It’s what I TAKE from those words and how they fit to my particular mood at the time.
I was listening to Crawl Back To My Coffin by Dayseeker tonight and I thought damn, there’s an article here. It’s going to be really exposing but hey, I’m sure I’m not alone, right?
WHEN A SONG KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE TO HURT
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes a song fit the bill for these occasions. Sometimes it’s the lyrics, sometimes the vocal delivery, melody or atmosphere, usually it’s some combination of all four!
Sleep Token’s Telomeres, particularly the section that begins “we go beyond the farthest reaches…” gets me every time. Something about the intensity with which Vessel sings it, combined with the melody and lyrics, makes me wish someone would feel like that about me one day. It feels like devotion to someone and from someone, in a way I don’t think I’ve experienced. Tonight, the grief in it comes from wishing I could have that with someone I can’t be with right now.
Similarly in Let Me Leave by Currents; the reverb, the beautiful minor guitar in the background, the almost tired sounding vocals going into louder raw shouting, feeling what he’s talking about, desperation, regret, hopelessness… it’s theatre for me.
The screaming section and angry guitar breakdown combined with crashing drums lets me release the emotion I feel without having to shout loudly myself, I’d wake the neighbours and I don’t want to display myself THAT publicly, I can listen and process with my headphones on and go through the inner turmoil in a more dignified way by listening to someone else express themself like that.
Listening to Crawl Back To My Coffin by Dayseeker, I reshaped Rory’s lyrics into what I needed them to mean tonight. I thought: I can’t be the only person who does this. This song feels like having hoping in a relationship, only for it to end the same way as the ones before it… crawling back to your coffin after someone made you feel so alive.
I think heavy music opens up more in the way of opportunities to express feelings than more conventional sad songs; screaming, anger in the form of heavier instrumentation… the juxtaposition of the heavy, angry and jarring against the more recogniseable “sadness”. Vocal cracks, screams, swells, breakdowns, stripped-back sections…. all of these aid in breaking the dam!
There are definitely singers that can make me feel this way with ease; Vessel, Rory Rodriguez, Noah Sebastian…but I’ve been listening to songs like this long before they existed, Evanescence/Amy Lee’s My Immortal (also a great cover by Dayseeker!), Avril Lavigne’s I’m With You…. this isn’t a new thing for me, these are just some of my current favourites. Let’s be honest, it has USUALLY been about unrequited love even as a school girl! Hey… I’m a lover, alright?!
SONGS FOR WHEN YOU NEED TO MAKE IT WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER
I just went outside to take a break and ended up lip-syncing My Immortal under the stars like I was starring in my own low-budget emo music video. Which, honestly, probably tells you everything you need to know about the songs on this list. All I needed was a downpour of rain and I’d be set!
MISSING SOMEONE YOU CAN’T HAVE
Sleep Token - Telomeres
This song feels right for this category of sadness. Starting with just piano and Vessel singing, it feels empty and really sums up the feeling of being alone musically. Whatever Vessel intended it to mean, for someone who doesn’t have that kind of love it can feel like envy, longing to be the person someone feels that way about. The anthemic guitar breaks up the vocals and gives you time to digest what has just been said, allowing it to hit deeper. His vocal trills almost sound like actual crying. It’s beautiful in a tragic way. “Let the tide carry you back to me…” I wish it would.
WHEN SOMEONE MADE YOU FEEL ALIVE AND THEN LEFT
Dayseeker - Crawl Back To My Coffin
There’s something horribly effective about the image in this song. Someone comes along, drags you out of whatever emotional grave you’ve been hiding in, makes you feel alive again, and for a while you genuinely believe maybe this time will be different.
Then they leave, or things fall apart, and somehow you end up right back where you started - except now you remember what it fe1lt like to be alive which almost makes it worse.
That’s what this song does for me. It captures the horrible mixture of hope, embarrassment, grief and again “why did I let myself believe in this again?” energy. It isn’t just missing someone. It’s missing who you were when they were there.
WHEN YOU NEED TO SCREAM WITHOUT ACTUALLY SCREAMING
Currents - Let Me Leave
Sometimes sadness isn’t quiet. Sometimes it’s frustration, anger, desperation and wanting to scream into the void until your throat hurts. Let Me Leave gives me that without me actually having to do it. The vocals get harsher, the guitars get heavier, the drums crash in and suddenly all that pent up emotion has somewhere to go.
I don’t have to explain myself or find the right words, somebody else is already making the noise for me. I can sit there with my headphones on, let the song rage on my behalf and come out the other side feeling like I’ve released at least some of it.
WHEN GRIEF NEEDS IT’S OWN SOUNDTRACK
Linkin Park - One More Light
With National Suicide Prevention Day only yesterday, this one has been on repeat a lot. I’ve been thinking about my friend Ceri who died by suicide in 2022. His birthday is next month, as well as it being the anniversary of losing him.
Chester’s voice, the vulnerability of the whole song and the context of his own death make this one especially hard to listen to. It makes me feel closer to Ceri while somehow making his absence feel even bigger at the same time.
Sometimes I can’t listen to this song, or others that bring that grief up for me, because I know it would push me too far into it. But when I can, One More Light feels like an anthem for anyone who has lost someone… and for people who have found themselves in that darkness too.
WHY HEAVY MUSIC DOES THIS SO WELL
Heavy music just works better for this kind of sadness sometimes. A soft ballad can be devastating, obviously, but there are days where sad isn’t just sad. It’s anger, grief, frustration, wanting to scream, wanting to throw something, all of it mixed together. Sometimes you need something heavier to lean into.
Screaming in music helps because it fe1els like someone else is doing it for me. I’d love to stand on a mountain and shriek until my lungs gave up but I’d also be horribly self conscious and probably scare someone half to death… So headphones it is. I c1an sit there and lip sync along like an absolute lunatic and it still feels like some of that energy has gone somewhere.
The contrast matters too. Heavy songs can go from soft and almost delicate into something absolutely crushing and I think that’s why they fit sadness so well. Feelings don’t stay at one level, they build, drop off, come back, get angrier, get quieter. The music does the same thing.
I think heavy music lets you feel all of it at once1 instead of making sadness sound pretty. Sometimes sadness ISNT pretty. It’s ugly, loud, messy and completely overwhelming.
And weirdly, once I’ve let myself go through all of that with a song, I usually feel calmer. Like I’ve actu1ally got some of it out instead of sitting there trying to pretend I’m fine. I’m not hurting myself, I’m not taking it out on anyone else, I’m just letting someone else scream it for me for a bit.
Sadness is ugly, loud and uncontrollable sometimes. Heavy music gets that.
THE PART WHERE YOU EVENTUALLY COME BACK UP FOR AIR
Eventually the song ends, or I get bored of replaying the same one for the fifteenth time and something shifts. I’m still sad, obviously, music hasn’t magically fixed whatever is going on in my life, but I feel less full of it.
That’s the best way I can describe it really. Beforehand everything feels packed in too tightly, like I’m carrying too much at once and there’s nowhere for it to go. After I’ve cried, listened, lip synced dramatically under the stars or let someone scream into my headphones for me, there’s a little more room in my head again.
Sometimes I put something lighter on afterwards, sometimes I sit in silence for a bit and sometimes I apparently go straight back to Boss Ass Bitch like nothing happened. There’s no big ritual to it. I just know when I’ve had enough.
There is one thing that can completely ruin this very serious emotional process though: whatever deranged algorithm decides what comes next. You can be three songs deep into staring at the ceiling, crying your eyes out and having a full existential crisis, then suddenly Apple Music decides BABY SHARK is apparently the natural progression!!! Nothing drags you out of your own tragic little music video faster…
Honestly sometimes the algorithm has the emotional intelligence of a teaspoon.
I don’t think sad music works like this for everyone and I’m definitely not saying you should deliberately make yourself feel worse if you know it sends you to somewhere unhealthy but for me, leaning into it for a while helps me process whatever I’ve been trying not to feel.
Sometimes I don’t want cheering up, I don’t want someone telling me everything will be fine. I just want a song that gets it, lets me fall apart for a bit and then helps me come back up for air.
And apparently sometimes that means standing outside pretending I’m Amy Lee!
PLAYER TWO: What’s your emotional damage song? The one you deliberately put on when you know you need a good cry.
I don't listen to music that's sad on purpose, but I think I understand what you're saying. Instead I write down everything I'm thinking, because all the thoughts and negative feelings will bottle up inside me. My head just fills up, plus I dwell on things forever unable to forget, so writing down is the release valve for me - like with your music. My head gets emptied, the weight gets lifted, and the feelings don't feel so bad anymore.
I've come to realise that although we all try to focus on more positive feelings, that is actually a distraction and trying to bury what is meant to come out. It's not pleasant, but sometimes we have to push through to come out the other side.
It's really interesting what you shared, thanks a lot.