What's your favorite depressing song?

[JohnIII]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
I think litsening to depressive music is sick. It's like deriving entertainment from watching people die from tubercolosis or something, revelling in and deriving pleasure from another person's fatal disease.

Listening to depressing songs is more disturbing. It's like someone's forcing themselves out of depression and repressing their emotions, which is more self-destructive than listening to Five Leaves Left.

[General Ludd]

Pretty much anything by Tom Waits.

[Boris Godunov]

I don't know about you, but I listen to depressing music when I'm in a good mood. It's actually the best time to listen to it. When I'm in a bad mood, I usually don't listen to anything.

It's interesting to note that for many composers, their gloomiest music was written when they were emotionally stable, while their happiest stuff was written while in the throes of a deep depression (Tchaikovsky is a perfect example).

[Buck Birdseed]

I usually litsen to angry and confrontational music when I'm in a bad mood.

Being in a good mode when litsening to depressing music almost makes it worse, you're happy 'cause of a guy's misfortune...

[Boris Godunov]

Music is meant to be listened to, who cares what mood one is in while doing it?

[Buck Birdseed]

I do! If you're depressed and sharing someone else's depression that's less bad than if you're distantly dissecting their unhappiness, from your position of relative health. 'Slike, I can understand and pity two anorexics discussing how not to eat, but a healthy person giving one of them slimming tips is just nasty.

(On another note, I personally find no appeal whatsoever in properly depressive music. (Not just sad, or desperate, or self-destructive, or I've-Lost-My-Girl-Please-Come-Back Suicidal, but I-completely-lack-energy-and-the-ability-to-feel-joy depressive.) I wouldn't litsen to it whatever mood I was in, except possibly "depressed" (which I've never been).)

[JohnIII]

I'm a bit shaky on your categories here, BB. Can we have examples of your (obviously tenuous) distinction between 'properly' depressive and the other kind of depressive?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
I do! If you're depressed and sharing someone else's depression that's less bad than if you're distantly dissecting their unhappiness, from your position of relative health. 'Slike, I can understand and pity two anorexics discussing how not to eat, but a healthy person giving one of them slimming tips is just nasty.

First, the composer isn't aware you're listening to it, so comparing it to giving "slimming tips" to anorexics is pretty silly.

Second, most people bring their own emotions and experiences to the music they listen to. It's not about dissecting the emotions of the composer, it's about having the music speak to your own experiences and emotions.

[alva]

Ne me quite pas - Brél

[Buck Birdseed]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
First, the composer isn't aware you're listening to it, so comparing it to giving "slimming tips" to anorexics is pretty silly.

Composer? The popular musician should be ware of his sales figures...

Sean: Depression is a medical condition characterised by prolonged, constant sadness (ie. more than a couple of weeks at a stretch), listlessness and lack of energy, extreme introversion and strong suicidal tendencies. Way different from all I listed above. He doesn't have the energy to be desperate or decadently self-destructive or pour-your-heart-out sad, and it goes way deeped than normal, short-lived melancholy.

[Jac de Molay]

Anything by the Cowboy Junkies, especially the Trinity Sessions

[Boris Godunov]

Do think a popular musician cares if people are buying his work and listening to it to "dissect" his emotions? I don't think he gives a crap so long as it sells.

[Buck Birdseed]

I'd only wish. Unfortunately, there are many, many who claim to be creating Art and serious, heavy, "meaningful" music. Without exeption, all music made by clinically depressed people will fall into this cathegory, just litsen to Joy Division's "Closer" or Iggy Pop's "The Idiot".

[Boris Godunov]

So, if you don't like music made for art's sake, and you don't like music made for money's sake, what is left?

In the end, does it matter a rat's tuchus why an individual chooses to listen to a particular piece of music?

[Buck Birdseed]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
So, if you don't like music made for art's sake, and you don't like music made for money's sake, what is left?

Music for Music's sake? Anyway, I never claimed the latter. I like commercial music, as long as it's musically viable commercial music and not some sort of sell-out junk.

In the end, does it matter a rat's tuchus why an individual chooses to listen to a particular piece of music?

I think it does. It's like the ten-year-old and the Paedophile watches Sesame Street for different reasons, and I won't condone both.