Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Bit of a different angle today. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that periodically, I like to dip my toes into hot-music takes.

Probably my most infamous one was my comment that "music in the 1990s was pretty shit except for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." I got roundly smashed for that one.

Mainly by Gen Xers who love to define themselves as so chill and laid back. Not about 1990s music it seems.

But that line is also very tongue-in-cheek. For example, OK Computer is in my top five albums of all time; Slipknot's self-titled debut (1999) is also an incredibly influential album on me, it started my love of metal. There are plenty of perfectly adequate albums from the 1990s.

But music, eh? It's a funny thing. I think it's the greatest invention of humankind. We learnt to make a series of notes that tickle our aural sense and bring people together in a brand new community every time. I don't know if there is anything like it.

You know that moment at a live gig, where the band/singer players a song you love, and you look across the dance floor and catch the eye of some stranger who also loves that song, and you have a moment. There is real human connection that is forged in music that is dissolved by the cold light of silence.

I have used music as an escape for years. As a teenager, I was probably happiest (happiest? most content probably) lying on my bed, listening to a brand-new CD from beginning to end. It's one of my old-man gripes about streaming music. Getting an LP or CD meant you often found your favourite song wasn't the single that was getting all the airplay but some random song buried at track 11 that you could then brag about because other people didn't know that one and aren't you cool for liking the obscure track?

I suppose there are people who may do this with streaming albums. But I don't.

Anyway, this was all a roundabout, beginning to talk about sad music. I mentioned OK Computer above. Exit Music (For a Film)  is my absolute go-to sad anthem. Angsty Dave, who was diagnosed with bipolar at age 16 (it was still "manic depression" back then), would sit on his bed, wistfully staring out the window and listening to that song on repeat.

I find beauty in sad music. I know some people who just straight-up don't listen to it at all. And that's fine. I love it. I also love listening to it when I'm not feeling sad too. Sometimes it's just nice to have on.

Usually, a song is sad/happy/whatever, because we attach an emotional event to it. So, for me, Coldplay's Yellow and Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet (shut up) are very tied to a breakup I went through as a 16-year-old (in my defence, they were on some Now...That's What I Call Music equivalent CD that I had just bought when the breakup happened so I stumbled into them). And so now, over 20 years past that breakup, where I don't feel anything at all about it, where I haven't even thought of the girl in most of that time, if I hear those songs, I'm immediately taken back to my angsty teenage days where I would sit and pen angsty teenage poetry (committing to rhyming poetry, especially the one that talked about "suicide" rhyming it with "on my bike I'll ride".

I don't think there are many things that immediately drag me back to a moment in time, an age, an era of my life, or a feeling I once felt.

And there are other songs that I view as inherently sad. I mentioned Exit Music above. There is no specific event tagged to that song for me. It just sounds fucking sad (no, the end credits of Romeo and Juliet was not a triggering event for me).

But these things are different for every person, aren't they? I don't think there is a song that is objectively sad (maybe Exit Music or something by Leonard Cohen), actually I'm not sure you can claim any emotional response has an objectivity. That's what objectivity is, Dave you egg.

Many years ago, when writing under the Ruminator pseudonym, I'd do these curated Twitter playlists where I'd ask people to submit a song to add, and there'd be a new theme every time, so I'd produce Spotify playlists like Worms for the Ear, and Music to Pump You Up.

I thought that might be fun to do again.

And because my mental health has been in the toilet in just about every facet of my life, work, play, family, etc (probably still is but I'm working on it)(I'll eventually work up the courage to write it all out), I wanted sad songs. So why not ask the people foolish enough to follow me on that godforsaken platform.

And I did. And people delivered.

The playlist is called Twitter sad boy 2024 and you can find it here. It's open, so anyone can add to it. I'd love you to add more.

I've taken a very light-touch approach to deleting songs - only if they're obviously not in keeping with the theme (thus, I'm dictating that there is an objectively not-sad genre?), but why a song is sad to you is not for me to know or understand.

There are songs on that list that I absolutely do not consider sad. In fact the highlight of these is that someone put Nick Cave's Into My Arms as a sad song. Which I can totally see why. But I have a very happy association with it.

It's the song that Kim walked down the aisle to for our wedding.

For me, that's a happy song. For the person who added it, it's sad. And that's ok with me. Unless it was Kim that added it, in which case we may be having an awkward chat at some point in the near future.

Through this process, I have discovered so much new music, which is hard when you're my age. Other than this playlist, the music I've found in recent months came via a dear friend who works with me and is much more youth-adjacent. They played Chappell Roan, Cobrah, and Charli XCX's new album, brat for me. But this playlist has taken me to some wild places.

John Grant. Heard of him? I hadn't. Incredible musician. Incredible range of songs. There's one in particular I've been thrashing: Queen of Denmark. To give you a flavour of me, I can't work out if I love that song because it sounds like Queen, or a bit of Muse, or it sounds like it might come from a musical, but I love it.

So the meandering point of this post is that I'd like you to keep building out this playlist with your sad songs. I know of one friend who has used this playlist to have a cathartic cry in the shower. And that might sound bleak and awful. But sad is just as valid an emotion to feel and express as any other.

My age was taught that we should always strive to be happy. But the world forces too many negative externalities on us, and also it's just not healthy or possible to be happy all the time. So have a cry in the shower listening to Sharon Van Etten's Every Time the Sun Comes Up. Sit on your crisply made bed staring out the window listening to Another Love by Tom Odell. Drive about 10kph under the speed limit belting out Everybody Hurts by REM*.

Go, add to the sadness. Enjoy the sadness. Be happy with your sadness. Sing along with your sadness.

Here is the link to the playlist again: Twitter sad boy 2024

If you want to just suggest songs in the comments, I can add them that way too.

*you will find all these songs on this playlist btw