Sad songs say so much - and make situations better for some, worse for others

 

When Elton John composed “Sad Songs” he suggested listening to songs when all hope is gone – to share the pain because every single word makes sense. It feels so good to hurt so bad, he wrote.

Listeners can’t get enough of sad songs, suggested Tim Byron in an article in The Big Issue (20 June to 3 July, 2014). And music psychologists have studied why it is that some people like sad songs.

In 2014 Annemieke Van den Tol, a lecturer at the University of Kent’s School of Psychology in England, published her research on the effects of sad songs. She asked participants to reflect on recent situations in which, when already sad, they had listened to sad music. Respondents were asked whether they listened specifically to the beauty and poignancy of the lyrics, whether the music helped them take their mind off their own sadness, or whether the music helped them reframe their sad thoughts. Participants said sad songs improved their mood.

Sandra Garrido and Emery Schubert, of the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music in Australia, conducted a similar study in 2013 to track peope’s moods before and after listening to sad or happy music. Respondents said they were absorbed in the beauty of sad songs, and that they felt better after listening to sad music. The researchers concluded that, generally, listening to sad music was a healthy pastime. They indicated that it was a healthy way of getting through tough times.

However, this was not true for all listeners. Garrido and Schubert found that for some people listening to sad songs was definitely not healthy. They categorized these listeners as “ruminators.” Ruminators were the types of people who found it hard to stop thinking about sad times, and everything that had gone wrong in the past throughout their lives. The researchers also suggested that some ruminators often had depression throughout their lives, or were bipolar, or had trouble regulating their moods in general. Therefore sad songs had the opposite effect on ruminators, than on the general public. Where most people felt better after listening to sad songs, ruminators felt worse. Instead of the music helping them come to terms with their own sadness, ruminators said sad music made them remain sad for longer periods of time.

The researchers suggested that if sad music does not add any positive feelings to a ‘low’ mood, then change the music! But they added that the reason why people listen to sad music was not definitively known, and nor was the link between sad music and personal moods. Many other factors had not been taken into account, such as whether listening to music alone produced different moods than when listening to sad music with other people - or whether collective moods affected individual moods. Either way, sad songs say so much.