I found out that I don’t find what some people call ‘sad songs’ sad. I don’t even call them sad songs. I was listening to ‘you were good to me’ by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler as a friend drove me home about two weeks ago.
Should I change the song? It’s a sad song > Is this what you call a sad song? > YEAHHH ???!!!?> I just find it a soft song. If this is what you call a sad song then I listen to a lot of sad songs
(honestly this made me wonder if maybe i’m not a happy enough person compared to most people)
“Sad song”. I understand how it can be a “sad song” but I just saw it as a soft song of an ambivalence of emotions that didn’t feel sad to me. I am in a good mood now, and I listen to the song and I can feel how part of it is sad now, and how since it really doesn’t align with my mood I don’t want to listen to it because the sad part of it drags me down… I still find an ambivalence of emotions in it though, personally.
Even with Epik High’s music. When I was in high school their music never sounded sad to me, they just sounded hopeful and honest. Epik High is renown for ‘sad music’. I was a depressed soul in high school and didn’t find my depression that bad back then. But to look back on high school me, I don’t ever want to go back, I felt empty for years. How I managed to not find it that bad and that it was okay? It was because I didn’t really use anything as a comparison, being like that for years, made me kinda forget how to be happy. I was undeniably feeling sad back then but I found it okay at the same time — it’s hard to say whether I was use to it or not, because what I was feeling was not good, undeniably. (But to circle back to what I was saying: I was okay with it since everyday was like that anyway, there wasn’t much comparison, that was my normal.) It was only after I got out of depression that I realised how bad it was. It’s only when I’m in a good mood and listen to Epik High’s music that I realise it’s sad.
I think it’s because even when I’m feeling sad there’s this positivity and an ambivalence that I try to cling to every time. It’s hard to see everything as 100% bad or feel 100% sad. What others call ‘sad songs’ usually sound soft? At least the ‘sad songs’ I listen to anyway, and this softness doesn’t feel negative to me, it feels soothing and I actually find it comforting and ‘positive’. Or at least part positive, so with positive-tinted lens I see the negative as quite positive. (I have an image of a rose tinted shade and a poop emoticon in my head.. sad songs are rose tinted poop emoticons.. an aesthetic lmao.. I find the complexity of sad feelings interesting, emotionally full and because of that I see how negativity can be romanticised.
Even if it’s just 10% positivity or some type of good feeling I cling onto it. That’s just how I deal with anything.
I just see sad songs as soft songs. I mean I almost never do negative thinking, I’m usually positive even when I’m in a low mood. I remember looking through P’s sad song playlists that he follows that have loads of followers and are basically titled something like ‘sad song playlists’, after he recommended a sad songs playlist to me, and I was like ‘so those are sad songs?… i don’t find those songs sad?’ My type of sad songs are songs that sound absolutely desolate and empty… … I think that’s when I really have nothing to cling onto — when I feel like that. I don’t like listening to empty-sad songs, they make me feel hopeless. Those are the songs that actually make me feel sad, not soft/sentimental/love-”sad” songs, because those are just soft songs to me.
To be honest, other than people, music is what made me get out of depression. Seeing how everyone and everything are like giants worlds to me, all so different, made me feel and not be empty. It made me have hope and it made me open up my heart a bit. Until this day, I still think I like that. Simply just like that I got out of depression. I think I was 16 or 17? That’s when what I call ‘depression’ was gone for me. In a way that I know I don’t feel like I’ll ever go back to, because I learnt how to not feel empty. There are too many worlds in this world I live in. I can feel so much.
