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Underground > Radio & Music >

Unintentionally Sad/Happy Songs

03:45 / 07.01.04

I was thinking about this thread because I listen to the song "No Children" by the Mounatin Goats every morning on the way to work lately, and it just never fails to bring a smile to my face. The song just makes me happy, despite its subject matter: a bitter alcoholic. Maybe the bitterness is so over the top and open, it just seems happy and free. I kind of think he intended this song to bring at least a smirk to the lips, but it got me thinking how many songs there are like that out there--that is songs that have a facially depressing or hopeless text or tone that in fact bring a smile to the face. And how, to me, a lot of the most DEPRESSING songs are songs that were probably meant to be happy or uplifting.

The first unintentionally sad song I could think of was "Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Brighter Day" by Jim Croce, which most people probably haven't heard. Anyway, whenever I hear the song, I can't help but think to myself, "Wow, tomorrow is clearly NOT going to be a brighter day for this guy."

I am sure there are more, but I am having trouble thinking of good concrete examples. This isn't related to context; for instance, "I hate the song 'I Can See Clearly Now' because I watched my father get mauled by a bear while I was listening to it on my walkman."

Thoughts...

10:51 / 13.01.04

Unintentionally happy: oh, bucketloads. Current favourite is Jeane, by the Smiths: the bit where it goes "We tried and we failed, we tried and we failed" makes me think of the recent, protracted and painful death of a 15-year friendship and makes me dance about with glee, smiling so hard my face cracks. The Divine Comedy's Lucy is also a guaranteed feel-good rockin' number, which is unusual for a song about the death of a loved one.

Unintentionally sad: Not sure if this counts, but REM's The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. I've been obsessed with this song since I first heard it, and while it doesn't make me cry or anything, I just think it's really bleak and miserable. But then I looked it up on the interwebnet to try and work out what's going on it - it's a triangular set up, with a "you" a "me" and a "her", which is about one step more complex than I can manage in my song lyrics - and everyone else seems to think that it's funny or some such thing. Tchah.

I think I might have a thing about songs about phone calls, though, because that old 80s song "Clouds Across The Moon" makes me cry, too. (But that is an intentionally sad song. Surely.)

00:46 / 15.01.04

The Smiths are like that. No matter how hard Morrissey wants to cry in his early work there, it makes me want to pucker my lips and dance around like a tart. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want always makes me happy to hear. A lot of 80's sadsack music is like that for me (The Cure's "Lullaby", etc.).

A Lot of Jim O'Rourke songs do that for me. 'Insignificance' is a song that never fails to get me moving for some reason. Radiohead's "A Wolf At The Door" is so grand and sweeping that it always pumps me up like crazy - round the part where he talks about his children being stolen I'm usually in a tornado of sing-along jubilation. (What a good fuckin' song...)

As for happy songs that make me sad... Hm. There's something really sad about "Brown Eyed Girl", though I've no idea why. Hendrix's "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)" is awesomely transcendent, and paints a literal picture in my brain like few other songs ever have - Hendrix building a machine to transform him and his girlfriend into mer-people and finding a better, brighter civilization deep beneath the waves - but there's something indescribably grim about it - something about the spectre of that terrible world and the friends left behind lingers with me. Remembering the repeating guitar-line alone always leaves me in a mood for regret.