Rock ETAs

Feeling Good By Feeling Bad.

Have you ever noticed how a lot of the very best music will come out of misery and suffering? It’s true!

Okay, so there is the obvious category of Goth to begin with; not everyone’s cup of tea, much like I could go my whole life without luxury bathroom accessories. But goth rock still deserves a mention. Some bands are unhappy to be placed beneath this black umbrella term and you could sit arguing all day about whether certain groups are true Goth outfits. Joy Division recorded some brilliant material, but it was all full of woe. Their singer, Ian Curtis, was a depressive and he ended up hanging himself in his home.

But depression and abject misery is by no means confined to the category of Goth. These dark emotions rear their heads in just about every type of music; and they have made great subjects for hundreds of different songs. Even Pop is full of good examples; think about Gnarles Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ for instance. In fact, a large percentage of this band’s music has some very dark and edgy lyrics.

Folk is also full of sorrowful songs and Leonard Cohen’s early albums make great suicidal accompaniment! A lot of the late Nick Drake’s work makes for miserable listening; and even Simon and Garfunkel wrote a good few gloomy tracks in their time.

The Heavy Metal and Rock genres have got some great depressing tunes. Think about Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’; ‘I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all. Carry on, carry on ‘cos nothing really matters.’ Or Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ with its tale of impending insanity. And those are just a couple of the more well known songs; there are hundreds of lesser heard tracks that are just dripping with doom-ridden words.

The truth of it is that depression, melancholia and broken hearts are all fantastic ingredients for a song. If you picked out the most popular tracks of all time, then most of them would have these dark themes. Wallowing in self-pity (our own or someone else’s) can often be a truly enjoyable experience!