Why does listening to sad music make you feel better?

“Why does listening to sad music make you feel better?” That’s a bit of a leading question, isn’t it? Like “What impressed you most about your interaction with Kayla from custom services today?” In Britain it’s not our natural inclination to talk about things positively. This is the culture that answers the question “How are you doing?” with phrases like “Mustn’t grumble”, “Not too bad” and “Could be worse”.

After the kind of schooldays where every drop of available ridicule was wrung out of even the tiniest drop of vulnerability, it’s a wonder I can tell the difference between happy and sad. There’s still a rich vein of sentimentality in there somewhere but when I watch Michael Caine get his redemption at the end of The Muppet Christmas Carol, the tears have to squeeze their way out of ducts so relentlessly reluctant that it physically hurts because a tiny Bluto-like cartoon bully has appeared on my left shoulder firing daggers of shame into my eyes. There’s a cartoon British Humanist Association celebrant on on my right ineffectualy telling him off, with wings and a halo for the sake of metaphorical clarity, but she is armed only with Band-Aids and good intentions. The sting of those tiny daggers doesn’t go away easy.

When sad songs create an uptick in my battle-numbed emotions, it’s because they make me feel seen and understood. None of us has a monopoly on pain and certain artists express it in a way that seems uncannily perceptive because we get to muddle our emotional baggage with theirs in a sequence of minor chords and universal disappointments, heartbreaks, fears and losses. And there’s a beautiful fragility to sad songs that a stomping dance track cannot have. Happy songs make us forget our worries. But the worries don’t go away. Sad songs remind us that the worries are okay because even at our most lonely and afraid we are not truly alone. Or, to put it in a more British way, it could be worse.

Image by Jon (AI-generated)

This article is part of The Human Collective. Each week we take a prompt and create a playlist and accompanying articles. This week we were wondering when did you last laugh out loud? Check out the playlist: Sad Songs To Make You Feel Better Learn more about The Human Collective here.

Jon Ewing

After graduating from the University of Keele in England with a degree in Politics and American Studies, Jon worked as editor of a music and entertainment magazine before spending several years as a freelance writer and, with the advent of the internet, a website designer, developer and consultant. He lives in Reading, home to one of the world's most famous and long-running music festivals, which, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, he had attended every year since 1992.