Depressing Music

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Sorry if I'm bringing the mood down....


but what's your favourite depressing music/song/band?

I really like depressing music, but a lot of people can't seem to listen to it. I suppose I really like the emotion attached to it.

I haven't really heard much, just a couple of Radiohead songs, and other stuff here and there, I need to expand to other stuff.

What depressing stuff does you like then?

You should check Portishead, especially their second album, but be careful: it can really bring you down

A few more. You can't go wrong with any of these:

- Eels (1st album)
- Joy Division
- Massive Attack (some stuff)
- Morphine (one of my favourite bands ever, especially their last album)
- My Bloody Valentine
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Murder Ballads)
- Opeth (Damnation, highly recommended)
- The Notwist (12, also highly recommended, but check their other stuff, too)
- Theatre of Tragedy (Aégis)
- Tricky (Pre-Millennium Tension)

All in all I'd say my favourite bands from all of those are Morphine and Portishead.

Townes Van Zandt has some of the darkest, bleakest songs you'd care to hear. He went through insulin shock therapy when he we a young man and that seemed to do more damage than good. And the alcoholism didn't help. But he wrote some damn good lyrics and even if his voice was so ragged at the end of his life that what he was doing hardly sounded like singing, the honest pain in his performances can sometimes be overwhelming.

"A Song For"
"Rake"
"Marie"
"The Hole"
"Black Crow Blues"
"Nothin'"
"Waitin' Round to Die"

Tom Waits also has some pretty good dark songs. But there's also a lot of humor there too. His music for "The Black Rider" and "Blood Money" contain some fairly dark views of life. Of course "Blood Money" being based off of Woyzec isn't exactly starting from a happy place.

Both Townes Van Zandt and Tom Waits are doing variations of Blues which, as one might expect, often carries a lot of dark themes.

Bob Dylan too has grown darker and bleaker with age. And again, his most recent music has more connection with the blues than with folk. (Although it all gets fairly mixed together when you actually look closely at it)

Anyway, those would be my picks for depressing music.

Radiohead.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znUX39nNUSo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loRp3hZ8DWo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs5pH4GKYkI[/youtube]


^I know it's pretty generic but still.

I really like let's not sh*t ourselves by Bright Eyes. It's pretty long, but absolutely amazing too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QojxbANDHdk[/youtube]

Cold is the most depressing band I've ever heard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUPKSjALABA[/youtube]

I love that song...never really took it as depressing, though. Always took it more as a getting older kind of song.

I wouldn't call it generic. That's some of Beethoven's best stuff. Actually that movement never made me depressed. Instead It always seemed to me to be about building anxiety. I guess that's similar to depression.

Anyway, Moonlight Sonata is the one that always makes me depressed. Actually, if I want to get my heart racing and get my energy up, Beethoven's 9th Symphony played really loud is just the thing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMnrjQK2Z8Y&feature=youtube_gdata[/youtube]

This is a nice piece by Bach that I often enjoy when I'm feeling depressed.

There's something about the rhythmic motif that sounds trudging and...well....depressed. Whenever I hear it, I tend to imagine Beethoven depressed and trying to cope with his increasing deafness.