051b: Deep Dive - On Depressing Music

Warning, this gets dark.

[Warning - this Deep Dive discusses potentially triggering topics, including mental health, depression, and suicide.]

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Hey, all.

As winter settles in the Northern hemisphere, it’s time to bring out trusty old companions. Music provides comfort against the dark nights and biting chill, and certain vibes work better than others (though more power to you if you can play Now That's What I Call Summer Hits during a blizzard).

All jokes aside, there’s something to be said for depressing music during this time of year. I think about this relationship between songs and seasons regularly, and the turn of winter came up when listening to one of my all-time favorite bands: Insomnium. Their music has always had an autumnal or wintry vibe for me, and the lyrics often reflect that:

“In the evening of a grey day, a bleak day
I strayed into the dim silence of the hallowed trees
Where the fir-trees whisper of those been, those gone
Where the sacred earth still hides all those we once loved”

“In The Groves of Death”, by Insomnium

I felt moved to write about this as someone whose music taste is quite heavily steeped in styles which many call ‘depressing’, both inside and outside of metal. What is it about depressing music that is comforting for some and off-putting for others? I don’t promise I will find the answers, but I want to explore the topic nevertheless. Note: this essay will regard the topic purely from the listener’s perspective - there’s another essay in artists that have used their mental health for creating music.

Weighed Down With Sorrow

I’ll start with a true story about someone I used to know. We’ll call her Rachel. Rachel was a metal fan, holding down a local job and living in her own apartment. She also had borderline personality disorder, which resulted in unstable friendships, impulsive behavior and an occasional distorted sense of reality, especially in how people perceived her.

Her love of metal was mostly geared toward the symphonic and melodic genres, but something about the darkness of this gloomy band drew her in. She listened to them almost to the point of obsession, and began to commit the lyrics to memory.

This ultimately proved to be a trigger point. During one of her borderline episodes, feeling that all hope was lost in her life and she was unloveable, she attempted suicide. While in the throes of pain, she wrote the lyrics of the song “Weighed Down With Sorrow” to me in messages, while I helplessly read them.

In this case, the story does have a happy ending. The ambulance got to Rachel in time, she got treatment and turned her life around. I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this band still figures in her listening habits. But the situation itself is worth examining.

Now, a lot of people would point to this story and say it’s a clear example of the music driving her to suicide. But, was it really? Rachel already had her issues embedded before discovering metal music, let alone the band in question. The vital question for me, which will have to remain unanswered, is, was this song in particular the tipping point? As I wasn’t physically present, I cannot say.

I will say this, though: in my view, it’s not long before these kinds of accusations start to resemble the ones that Eminem and Marilyn Manson received after the Columbine High School shooting. And that in itself is worrisome. There’s a long history of metal being accused of encouraging Satanism, ritual suicide, murder and who knows what else. If even the more ‘comforting’ sub-genres are being targeted, that could be disastrous.

Which way round is it?

Without the ability to psychoanalyze Rachel’s mentality, I turn to the only person whose mentality I can: mine.

Looking at the situation from pragmatically, I have two different ‘modes’ in listening to depressing music. One is in a balanced mood, and so I treat it like any other music (energetic, calming, what have you). The other, more pertinent here, is listening when I myself feel depressed (either due to external factors or as part of my bipolar cycle). In these latter cases, the music (and/or lyrics, if it’s a song about depression) takes on a blanketing comfort, a familiarity which is easy to empathize with but impossible to qualify.

Some music, however, is just too much for me. One famous non-metal example is A Crow Looked At Me by Mount Eerie; the one time I listened to this, I was utterly devastated. Maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace for it, I don’t know, but the fragile nature of the music was too much for my brain, and I ended up feeling emotionally numb for the rest of the day. This is curious to consider - does that mean I needed to be depressed to ‘get’ the music? Or perhaps it’s that particular album, where the background of it almost precedes the music itself? I’ll try again and get back to you when the time is right.

The research shows…

Every so often, a research paper pops up that states people who listen to heavy metal are ‘generally more balanced people’. I use ‘heavy metal’ as an example, because the majority of people who think of depressing music, think of metal rather than, say, singer-songwriter folk or modern classical piano - an interesting association in itself, given the above-mentioned Mount Eerie or cases like Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes, which can inspire relaxation or floods of tears depending on the listener.

Putting that aside, it intrigues me that this seems to be the common consensus among academics; those that actively expose themselves to darker kinds of music are in some way ‘better prepared’ for what life throws at them. Whether there is a correlation with the music also helping on a mental health level is worth exploring: do neurotypical people who like metal have the same kind of balance as those who are neurodivergent? Is it dependent on the sub-genre?

One such paper, available here.

Conclusion

I can say for myself that, if I hadn’t found some way to channel my negative feelings through music and writing, I wouldn’t be here today. I can also say that depressing music itself has never inspired such encouragement to end my life, anymore than listening to Bolt Thrower has turned me into a gun-slinging mercenary or the Bee Gees has made me want to dance (okay, that last one’s a lie). But the general answer is a lot more nuanced than just me, so please chime in with your own thoughts below!

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