ANTHEMS TO GIVING UP!

WARNING: A pretty depressing post, but don't worry, the author isn't suicidal or anything.
SO:
Thanks to the internet, when I feel really depressed, I can put a sad-sack song up on the ol' social networking 'site and passive aggressively let everyone I know get the gist of how shitty I feel. Now, if I still had my radio show, Ampersand Theater, I could make a weepy playlist for all the world's masochistic/cathartic benefit . However, I do not, and instead of sticking a bunch of songs on facebook just in case the people I am bummed with get the hint, here are some of my favorite songs to listen to when I hate pretty much everything:

This is one of the most effective songs for when you feel like the dung pile in the elephant's pen at Roger William's Zoo (on a rainy summer day?). The idea that the syrupy brother/sister duo put out a mainstream pop song with such honestly self-loathing lyrics blows my mind. The Carpenters' made more sad songs (duh) like "Rainy Days and Mondays" and the Sonic Youth-covered "Superstar" (baby baby baby baby ooooh baby),but "Goodbye to Love" tends to be the best illustration of how I feel in moments of despair.

THE LYRICS
I'll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love
has passed me by
And all I know of love
is how to live without it
I just can't seem to find it.

So I've made my mind up I must live
my life alone
And though it's not the easy way
I guess I've always known
I'd say goodbye to love.

There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine
Surely time will lose these bitter memories

And I'll find that there is someone to believe in
And to live for something I could live for.

All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my
only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I'll go on as best I can.

What lies in the future
is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune
as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that
I've been wrong
But for now this is my song.


Here's a humorous approach to throwing in life's towel! Here we have Lisa Germano's "Cancer of Everything":

This song creeps along slowly with a morbid sense of glee. Nothing like Germano's little girl vocals singing about the irrational desire to be destroyed in order to make everyone around you drop everything and pay attention to you. HEY, WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE, RIGHT? Right?

"Disintegration" by The Cure

This song is just gorgeous and creepy and heart-wrenching, and it cradles your despair like a tiny baby, gently rocking it back and forth into a deep underwater sleep of sadness. The best part is the monster back up vocal echo!


"Cry for the Fire" by the Residents

I can't totally explain this one, but it makes me feel better (actually, like most Residents songs, I think it's kind of sexy, but I'm a creep). The wailing? The fire requests? The caveman glossolalia? Whatever, if I say it's about despair, it's about despair. Don't be impatient, now! Listen to the whole thing!

"Put Me Down" by the Cranberries

Like "Goodbye to Love" and The Smiths' "I Want the One I Can't Have", "Put Me Down" is a great commiserating song: it sits there and sympathizes with you, an arm around your trembling shoulder. Hey, as far as '90s sad songs go, it was either this or Garbage's "I'm Only Happy When it Rains", which played on a loop in my head junior year of high school. This song might have the line "let me take you by the hand/ away from here to another land", one of my most hated rhyme cliches, but the music is just so beautiful. Her ethereal wailing really prompts the gushing of those tears you were keeping back. Maybe it's just because it's an early '90s song, and most early '90s music makes me think of being in the car as a little kid, but I think the perfect environment for listening to "Put Me Down" is in a tan Volvo parked in an empty lot, sun pouring through the windshield , your head plunked on the dashboard and drenching the beige vinyl.

"Meaningless" by The Magnetic Fields

This song speaks for itself. Listen closely, because he says "Mind-blowingly meaningless" at the end. "I Shatter" woulda been up here, but it's not on the you-tube.


"Allison" by Slowdive

Slowdive makes everything gut-wrenching. I barely ever listen to them because they hurt too much. Isn't that enough?
Thus concludes this post on "sad sadness songs." (Not to be confused with Sadeness,which is like, totally different, man.) I know I am leaving out a lot, but I have a comic to watercolor and I can't just sit here like a whiny baby right now.