I have often been accused of listening to “depressing” music, which I usually take to mean it sounds depressing, not that the lyrics are necessarily describing a depressing story. I like music, in general, that I can ponder about, that gets in my head. I don’t want it to just be entertainment. I’m introspective and an observer. Only 25 percent of us are introverts, they say, so I can see how others might not like my style.
I can’t quite understand why someone would respond to death metal, or Eminem, or Marilyn Manson – but I don’t often feel aggressive. I don’t respond to “club music,” that music that’s usually overtly sexual and has a grinding beat and lots of moaning and bass – but I don’t often feel raunchy. I don’t get excited by the Black Eyed Peas, or Lady Gaga, or Beyonce – but I don’t ever feel like getting up and dancing away my cares.
My point, of course, is that our musical tastes are a reflection of our personalities. My “depressing” music is often full of joy and hope; it’s just usually not rendered in an exuberant way. And yes, I’m something of a melancholy person. But I happen to find a kind of joy in melancholy. Some people like to escape from the everyday with entertainment; some of us want to try to understand it better by looking straight at it. Both ways are comforting. People are different.
Here’s an example: The song “Waste of Paint” by Bright Eyes. I’m sure many people would absolutely hate it and find it unnecessarily depressing and assume that anyone who listens to and responds to it is probably on the brink of suicide. I’m not on the brink of suicide, I assure you. But I respond to it and here’s why (briefly): we all feel like a failure at times, but it’s nice to know we’re not alone. It’s nice to know that someone who felt hopeless and unloved wrote a song about it, and recorded it, and released it, and now I can hear it, and know that his expression of feelings wasn’t a waste at all.
Another example: “The End of a Love Affair” by Billie Holiday.
Specifically, this is the A Cappella version of this song that was an outtake on the Lady in Satin album. This is the last album Billie recorded before she died at age 44 of heart and liver disease from too much drinking and too many drugs. She’d had a hard life. In this recording, her voice is ragged and hoarse. Technically, it isn’t nearly as good as her earlier recordings, but in this recording, in all its emotional nakedness, it’s full of profound sadness. And beauty. She’s describing something that we’ve all felt: a broken heart. She knows what she’s talking about and you can feel it in the voice. It’s depressing, yes. But it’s speaking the truth.
Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes) is about my age, and grew up in the Midwest like I did. But he’s also a guy and dated Winona Rider, so we’re not entirely similiar. Billie Holiday was a black woman who lived a very different kind of life from mine, and died twenty years before I was born. But these disparate individuals (from each other and from me) can speak to universal emotions (loneliness, failure, regret), and I know that I’m not quite alone, and there’s hope and even joy in that. And that’s not so depressing at all.
