Blues and country, two of the genres most associated with the misery of the human condition, still speak to us today. In the beginning the Lead Bellys and Robert Johnsons had their reasons to fight and be blue; to rail against the world and deal out murder and suicide like just another hand of cards. But does it make me depressed? Not really. In fact, there is little more thrilling than the misery of other people.
Even though I doubt they are singing from personal experience, when the Violent Femmes busk their way briskly through Country Death Song, and reach the moment where the depression has gnawed away at the protagonist's mind so much that he chucks his daughter down a well, it's such a thrill I almost want to burst out laughing.
And although George Jones tugs the misery-cord after his wife has left him in the Grand Tour "taking nothing but our baby and my heart", it's still a singalong moment when he bawls one of my favourite couplets "As you leave you'll see the nurs'ry/Oh she left me without mercy". It's too engaging to be truly depressing.
Elsewhere, the music of those who have committed suicide becomes unfortunately sealed in a bubble of retrospective analysis. Thom Yorke and Robert Smith have written lyrics as bleak as Ian Curtis or Nick Drake, and yet portentous lyrics tend to obscure the real issues behind suicide, which are surely far more complex or banal than lyrics ever make out, and all the more tragic for it. Somewhere in between is the work of Silver Jews' David Berman, who attempted suicide in 2003 but is now (I sincerely hope) feeling much better having recently announced his retirement from music. The album that followed this episode speaks of the "place past the blues I never want to see again". I remember seeing the song in question, There Is a Place, being played live with Berman repeating over and over "I saw God's shadow on this world", and feeling genuinely chilled.
Case Studies
Gloomy Sunday: The Hungarian suicide songThe infamous Gloomy Sunday has the official reputation of being the most depressing song ever. Allegedly (though likely to be urban myth), this song has inspired hundreds of suicides, and one of the original Hungarian composers indeed took his own life. This is less surprising when you learn that Hungary held the record for the highest suicide rate for most of the last century. That said, Billy MacKenzie of the Associates, who recorded the song in 1982, also committed suicide – though as this took place 17 years later it's perhaps a bit of a stretch to link the two events explicitly.
But why do people ascribe such emotions to the song? Billie Holiday recorded the best-known version, and it is a strange little song. The opening sequence of clarinet sighs stumbles through irregular bar lengths (3/4 then 2/4 then 3/4) before coming to rest on a sustained G minor chord. This disorienting intro sets the tone, the rhythm section dropping away to leave us suspended over a chasm for the opening line: "Gloomy Sunday, my hours are slumberless". This beginning is genuinely unusual: dislocated and hazy. Then the long G minor melts through a diminished chord into the rest of the song. What comes next I find more drab: the chord sequence is wandering and rootless, the melody relatively formless. However, this only reinforces the gloom.
Radiohead – How to Disappear CompletelyRadiohead's cheery little number from Kid A again goes beyond mere misfortune or sadness into dislocation and denial. Beginning with a cloud of strings, the chord sounds as if it is is built from intervals of fourths and fifths (thirds being most common), which is similar to Debussy's intervals in pieces like The Submerged Cathedral. From here on, the arrangement is built on dislocation, the instruments seemingly ignoring each other, while the guitar and voice could be a song drifting along in their own maudlin fashion. But it is more than this: the strings wander in and out, often unrelated to the simple strummed guitar, while the bass plays the same eight notes repeatedly, oblivious to anything else. Like in a film where someone dies but the radio keeps on, or the water carries on circling down the plughole in Psycho, the insistent bass mirrors the detachment in the lyrics – "I'm not here" – until the strings build into a glissando that buries Thom. Is it depressing, though? I find it too beautiful to really be so. A spiritual sister to this, without the sweeteners, is Nick Drake's
Know. The entire lyrics are: Know that I love you Know I don't care Know that I see you Know I'm not there
Throughout, the same guitar figure plays relentlessly like an uncontrollable spasm. The riff isn't inherently miserable, but the mechanical nature of the guitar and the singing certainly makes for desperate listening. So let's reach past the merely sad and dredge up the truly depressing.
From : Guardian Music Blog
Image : Nick Drake
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