The best songs are sad songs

There is a Ghost Mice song called “I’ll Be Happy” in which Chris Clavin claims, “misery sure makes you want to play guitar and sing.”

The song is about the fact that when you are happy, you can’t write a worthwhile song because when you are content, there isn’t much to sing about. Clavin is essentially saying the only good songs are sad songs. This is a view I carry as well. 

Throughout my life, the majority of my favorite songs have been sad songs.

I have always equated sadness with genius, with a few exceptions. All my favorite movies are at least a little bit depressing, and 90 percent of my favorite songs are depressing as hell.

Now I’m not saying that happy music doesn’t have its place — I love a good party song as much as the next person — I’m just saying that the best songs are generally sad. In order for a song to touch you, it needs to feel as if it was coming from the artist’s soul.

And as Clavin pointed out, the really moving lines only come when you are pouring your heart out on six strings.

This concept leads many people to believe that I only like slow, depressing acoustic ballads, which is not the case. I like up-tempo good time music as well. Now I know what you’re thinking, “How can he talk about songs only being great if they’re sad, yet say he likes good time music?”  My answer to that is that a song can be both.

When MTV Unplugged emerged, music fans used it to judge how good a band was. If a song still sounded good when stripped away from studio magic and being played with only acoustic instruments, then it passed. I like to use a similar test. If I were to take a pop song and play it slowly on an acoustic guitar, would it make you sad? If so, then yes, it is a good song. 

A great example of this is “Build Me up Buttercup” by The Foundations. The music is catchy and fun, full of organs and tambourines.

It is a great pop song to sing along to with its call and response vocals. However, when run through the test, we are left with a depressing ballad about someone who is hopelessly in love with someone who does nothing but let them down. They’re always late, they never call and they always leave them hanging. It is a very sad song; and therefore, it is a great song.

The master of up-tempo sad songs is Bruce Springsteen. He is a great songwriter because he can turn the saddest songs into great pop tunes that force you to dance. He is known for churning out anthems about escaping your boring, mid-American life and finding something bigger.

However, this very concept is built on the depressing idea that life in middle-America sucks, so even his happiest songs are built on a sad premise.

The best examples of his skill are two of his biggest hits, “Dancing In The Dark” and “Hungry Heart.” 

“Dancing in the Dark” is Springsteen’s classic about having writer’s block while writing “Born in the U.S.A.” Bruce “can’t start a fire without a spark.” The spark is life. Bruce has nothing going on in his life that he can write about. He sings, “I’m just tired and bored with myself.”

The irony here is that his sadness over the inability to write a song inspires him to write a song. We can all feel Springsteen’s pain in the fact that he has nothing going on in his life. This universal sadness is what makes this song so great.

“Hungry Heart” is a three-minute-and-19-second pop jaunt with bells, oooh’s and ahh’s and a funky organ solo. If you had the song on at a party, people would be on the floor grooving. But if you were to hear Springsteen play it acoustically, you would be instantly depressed.

The song is essentially about how we are all searching for our happiness, yet we will probably never succeed in finding it. Rarely does a pop song shoot down the idea of a person finding happiness and then repeatedly claim that they’ll never stop looking for it. 

Springsteen writes great songs because they work in the context of a stadium rock concert or a quiet bedroom.

They can make you dance, and they can make you feel.

They can make you smile, and they can make you sad.

Successful musicians layer elements and emotions to make for great songs. Anyone can write a song that will make you dance, but not everyone can write a song that makes you cry.

Even fewer can write a song that does both.