Alternative Seasonally Depressing Playlist of Sadness

'Tis the season to be jolly and joyous, and all that, but for some of us it's actually rather melancholy. Maybe it brings up painful memories, maybe the family gathering's full of tension and misery, maybe the family gathering's taking place 5000 miles away from you, or maybe you just get really bad SAD. Regardless of why (or even whether) we're glum, we can all agree that cheesy holiday songs are the absolute last thing we need. So I've knocked together a little playlist for an hour or so of anti-festive wallowing: Anna's Alternative Seasonally Depressing Playlist of Sadness.

Over the Rhine, “Latter Days”

A friend who's had an unbelievably awful year introduced me to this song recently, and no wonder. It's five and a half minutes of pure aural heartbreak. Hardened sociopaths have been made to tearily beg their victims' forgiveness by this song. Cthulhu himself weeps when he hears this song. “Latter Days” reduces me to a quivering ball of jelly, bawling on the floor under my desk as I clutch my knees to my chest and rock back and forth.

Roxy Music, “Avalon”

Okay, this one's solely on you, Max Brooks. DON'T JUDGE ME THIS IS THE MOST MOVING PART OF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHEN THE MOVIE COMES OUT (IF THEY DON'T KEEP THIS BIT IN THE MOVIE I WILL BE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINT)

Diana Ross, “If We Hold On Together”

Oh my God, Littlefoot's mom.

XTC, “This World Over”

My family's Christmas letter this year began: “Although the world sometimes seems to be in imminent danger of falling apart economically, climatically, and developmentally...” We're all a little obsessed with the end of the world, and as we enter 2012 it seems entirely appropriate to get emotional about it. (Any song that reduces my beloved London to “a sea of rubble” is hitting me where it hurts.)

Joy Division, “Eternal”

Call a friend before you listen to this, the apex of a brief, talented, and incredibly depressing musical career. Seriously, buddy system.

Coil, “Broccoli”

I don't even listen to this song. I almost didn't link to it, because it's just too cruel. When I hear it, I'm reminded of listening to it on the London Underground after watching Grave of the Fireflies, and nobody needs to be reminded of that.

Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”

Duh.

Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, “Praying Is A Heartache”

Cut from the same cloth as “Latter Days”, “Praying Is A Heartache” is SYGC's most beautiful song and the highlight of their 2009 album ...And the Horse You Rode In On. Yeah, I'm going to keep shamelessly plugging SYGC until somebody agrees with me that they are just the tops.

Peter Gabriel, “A Different Drum”

This song doesn't even have words. The lyrics are all, “oh-whoa-whoa-whoooooa...” If music can evoke the transcendent, “A Different Drum” definitely does.

Denim, “Don't Bite Too Much Out Of The Apple”

Ever suffered a distance-enforced break-up? If you're someone I know, probably – we all seem to have done it. Relive that pain. Wallow.

House of Love, “Man To Child”

Stop it. Just stop it. The world doesn't need more emotions, House of Love; it needs fewer, so quit trying to create them.

Antony & the Johnsons, “You Are My Sister”

You don't need to have a sister to be moved by this song. You don't even need to be a sister. As long as you have a friend close enough to be considered an honorary sibling, I defy you to listen to this song without at least getting a little something in your eye.

Adele, “Turning Tables”

Forget the sappy, overexposed, overrated “Someone Like You”. “Turning Tables” is the Adele song with the most raw feeling behind it.

Wicked cast, “For Good”

This is, like, the song for our jet-setting generation. If you've ever cursed the very existence of friendship because one party or the other always leaves, give this song a spin and shed a tear or two. Nobody's judging. Even those tedious people who say they hate musicals get verklempt at this song.

Dixie Chicks, “Wide Open Spaces”

Ever had a mother? Ever left her? Yeeah, good luck keeping those eyes dry, buddy.

Cheesy Songs, Strong Emotions

[Newsgrape.]

“I'll really miss ur talks about Pink Floyd, The Who and other stupid rock bands that don't affect my life in any way,” wrote Gloria in my goodbye journal. (Not the only double-edged comment – Susie's hilariously deadpan entry kind of makes me want to track her down on Facebook: “Good luck, not like you'll need it. Remember me when you're famous and I'll miss your intelligent jokes. Not.” In Nairobi, the nineties evidently didn't end until after 2002.)

Stupid it may have been, but my childhood love of dad-rock – not to mention my obnoxious habit, attested in Katy's goodbye note, of responding to the question “how's it going?” with “33rpm” ‒ has gained me a decent amount of cred over the years, as my coevals cringe at the memory of Backstreet Boys CDs past, and wish their pre-teen selves had liked bands as unembarrassing as The Who. I, however, rather wish I could participate in the collective cultural nostalgia for the nineties. Being a twenty-something who only knows three Spice Girls songs, two of them from school choir performances (TRUE FACT), can be lonely.

It's easy to like good music when you're unhappy. Nobody liked the Spice Girls in isolation. You liked them with your friends – ideally your posse of five, so that each of you could pick a Spice Girl to “Wannabe”*. If you didn't have friends, why would you listen to the Spice Girls?

*Ho ho! See what I did there?

I'm certainly not immune to the inverse correlation between amount of serotonin flowing and quality of music enjoyed. When I've been happy, and especially when I've been in a new relationship, I've imprinted emotionally on some awful dreck.

Exhibit A: LMNT's “Juliet”. I basically love this song. To my ears, it is a perfect slice of bubblegum cheesecake. I love that it apparently predates texting (“I've tried to page you twice”); I love that it completely misinterprets Romeo & Juliet as a totally awesome love story that should be emulated (though admittedly that misconception is so pervasive in popular culture as to be hardly worth remarking on); and I LOVE the utterly ridiculous gear change after the middle eight. Really, it is an unexceptional, justly-forgotten four minutes of turn-of-the-century boy-band silliness; but in my need for a little piece of aural happiness, something to express the regressing-to-adolescence giddiness of falling in love (“Every time I see you pass in my homeroom class makes my heart beat fast”), I happened on this particular nonsense, and now it is forever entwined with that period of my life and all the related emotions.

My only real criterion for a meaningful love song is that it be fresh. Obviously, the classic love songs of my childhood still speak to me, but they'll always be more about me than about anyone I fall in love with. For a song to have that especial one-time-only resonance, it must be free of all prior emotional weight for me. Something I wouldn't normally like is ideal for this purpose, because the sad and bitter end of the relationship will actually be a relief to the part of me that has musical taste and discernment.

We're about to go to quite a dark place with this. Bear with me.

This is something I haven't admitted to anyone before (except a neat girl I met at a house party last year in Haringey. If you're out there, get in touch! You worried you'd offended me by saying Willow/Oz is better than Willow/Tara. You're wrong, but we can still be friends!), but during my last relationship I used to listen to, well, certainly one of the five worst songs ever written.

Brace yourself.

Exhibit B: Blessid Union of Souls, “Hey Leonardo”.

Everything about that is just exquisitely awful, like an exact replica of Michelangelo's David sculpted from crap. Musically, of course, it's drivel, but it's the lyrics that really drive the song to Horrorville. They are lazy: the rhymes are half-hearted at best, and at one point the singer sighs rather than finish a line. And, oh God, they are so painfully dated! “She's phat like Cindy Crawford” is an actual line in an actual recorded song. I'll cop to a soft spot for anything that namedrops Fargo, though isn't it weird that one of the five worst songs ever written mentions one of the five best movies ever made?

However, there are two specific moments that instantaneously elevate this song to the peak of the highest mountain in the Himalayas of Suck.

1. The couplet:
   “Not because I sing like Pavarotti
   Or because I'm such a hottie”
   Truly, Shakespeare missed a trick, leaving that one out of “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I”.

2. The wacky sound effect following the mention of DVDs. 'Cause DVDs are futuristic, yo!

The really awful thing about this song, though, is that it reminds me of a particular person and the barrel of associated emotions. And I know exactly what will happen: one day I will be at a party, and I will have drunk a little too much, and some joker will put this song on. The room will fill with shouts of derision, and at first I will join in, but by the time the song attempts to rhyme “Tyson Beckford” with “Robert Redford” I will be in floods of tears.

Even knowing all the lyrics to Dark Side of the Moon before the age of twelve won't restore my cred after that.