A soundtrack for sadness
Surprise: I made a playlist about my feelings
The sadness I have felt lately has taken over my entire body. I am fine, I swear, I can get up and go to work and live my life and smile and laugh and be fine, but most days I’ve felt like I’m floating outside of my body, operating my arms and legs with marionette strings. I can put a couple of reasons behind it, because I’m better at intellectualizing my sadness than actually letting myself feel it: my calendar is so packed lately that I’ve been sleeping less than normal, I’m in my luteal phase and it feels like my post-ovulation hormones are crushing every last drop of serotonin in my body, and I haven’t been home to see my family in a few months due to the aforementioned busyness. Typically, I become the happiest version of myself when the weather finally dips below 70 degrees, but it’s taking me a little longer than usual to switch over this year and that alone is bumming me out. I’m also going through a Sad Thing that I don’t have the words to write about but would love to, someday, when I’m out of it. It feels like a big pile of sad is sitting on my chest these days, and I know it’ll be fine, but right now it’s hard.
I have managed to find some solace in music lately, distracting me just enough so that I can’t feel any feelings (except joy, obviously) for the duration of “Diet Pepsi” by Addison Rae. In lieu of writing something cohesive, or insightful, because I don’t think I have much in me to write, here’s a playlist for this weird period I’m going through, with some commentary because if there’s one thing I can write about when I have nothing else to say, it’s music.
“Our House - Demo” - Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell
“The windows are illuminated by the evening sunshine through them / fiery gems for you, only for you”
Loving someone so deeply that you know that the sun shining through the window is just for them. It’s remarkable. Graham wrote this song about Joni when he was 27, she was 26, and they were in love. It’s a beautiful ode to the ordinary: returning home after a normal day with someone, putting flowers in the vase you bought together, and sitting in that warm feeling of being known and loved by someone in your home. In an interview with Terry Gross, Graham said, “It was a very grey, kind of sleety, drizzly L.A. morning. And we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, and I said – got through the front door and I said, you know what? I’ll light a fire. Why don’t you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought? Well, she was in the garden getting flowers. That meant she was not at her piano, but I was … And an hour later ‘Our House’ was born, out of an incredibly ordinary moment that many, many people have experienced.”
“The Hit” - Orla Gartland
“I don’t wanna burden with how I’vе been feeling / it’s just my perception of what you’re perceiving / I’m thinking your thoughts before you even get there”
I have been sitting in this one since this album came out a bit over a week ago. Orla has been one of my favorite songwriters for a very long time and has managed to put things into words that I had never been able to articulate before (another one that does this for me is her song “Madison”). This pain of being known and knowing someone else intimately hits such a specific part of my heart. “You get the cut and I feel the sting” — it articulates the bones-deep pain of feeling so deeply connected to someone that you feel every pain they feel, and it is devastating. I would never be so bold (or annoying) as to call myself an “empath,” because I think nearly everyone has the capacity to feel empathy for their loved ones, but I often find myself feeling the pain of people I love in a way that I don’t find others feeling as intensely, and it’s exhausting. This puts that into words in a beautiful and uncomfortable way.
“Angel From Montgomery” - Bonnie Raitt
“Just give me one thing that I can hold on to / to believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go”
The moment I feel a slight breeze of fall air, I start sprinting in the direction of every pre-2000s country album I have ever loved. Bonnie Raitt’s Streetlights is one of them. This is originally a John Prine song written from the perspective of a middle-aged woman “who feels older than she is,” according to Prine, and the imagery of a woman halfway through her life, looking back on it with a palpable disdain really gets me right in the gut.
“I think about it all the time featuring bon iver” - Charli xcx, Bon Iver
“I was just scared to run out of time”
Never in a million years did I think I’d read the words Charli xcx and Bon Iver next to each other in this way. The combination is so precious and feels so specifically targeted to me that hearing this for the first time made me weep like a baby. For being 365 Party Girl™, Charli has always had an intense, visceral way of writing about her feelings — her pains, her needs, her desires. The original version of this didn’t hook me at first because, admittedly, I was too busy yelling “BUMPIN’ THAT” every 10 minutes to give the slower songs a proper listen, but this version of it has completely wrecked me. She comes out swinging in this one and it knocked me on my ass.
“On My Knees” - MJ Lenderman
“Here comes the sun and the birds all scream / "It's time to go to sleep" / Oh, wherever you find me, you'll find me on my knees”
I was hesitant to listen to this album. It takes a lot for a man to win me over in music right now, so I didn’t give this album a real shot until right before I saw him live a few weeks ago, and this one caught me off guard. Well, the whole album caught me off guard, but I felt this one in my bones. When I’m going through a particularly sad time, I either find myself wanting to sleep all the time or not being able to sleep at all. I can’t turn my brain off, and when I do I can only sleep for a few minutes at a time, so I’ll usually stay awake until sunrise. This song feels like staying awake for too long, for whatever reason, and then hating yourself for it the next day.
“North Country” - Gillian Welch, David Rawlings
“I'll tell you now we could be together / If you ever get tired of being free / Way up in the North Country”
I love these two. I love this song. Their timeless writing, the enduring feeling of longing from a distance, the passage of time. I moved to a new neighborhood a few months ago, one that actually has sidewalks I can walk on (a brand new concept for me, at least since college). I went on a walk to listen to this album front-to-back, and it temporarily fixed me. It’s the combination of the pain of yearning and the pain of loving. It’s intense, and it’s good.
“hunting days” - Khatumu
“Treat me like a dog, take me out back / Put a bullet in my brain / Tell me that my hunting days are done”
I know absolutely nothing about this song or this artist, but I heard this on TikTok recently and I felt like I got sucked into a vortex. I have a propensity for developing feelings for people who, I think, care about me significantly less than I care about them. Self-sabotage, maybe, or just bad taste in people, but this one feels like that. I wish it were easier to ask someone “Why do you speak monotone to me?” in a way that doesn’t feel like begging to be acknowledged. Begging to be seen. This song puts those feelings of worthlessness in a tangible way.
“For Me It’s You” - Jobi Riccio
“Everyone has a dream they know probably won't come true / For me it's you”
My sweet pal Jobi has one of the most beautifully haunting voices I have ever heard. Someone recommended her to me and I fell in love with her debut album Whiplash immediately. This song is devastating, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s about unrequited love for someone, feeling it silently, longingly, and painfully. It makes me want to bash my head into a wall.
“Echo” - Clairo
“There's a secret I can't keep from you and I think you already know / It's in the things I see in you and what you notice I echo”
I could write an entire novel on Clairo’s Charm, and maybe I will. But for now, I will say this: It takes a lot to shock me. I grew up on the Internet, I’ve seen just about every weird dark corner of it, and I have become deeply desensitized to most sex, drugs, nudity, profanity. It rolls right through me. Charm taps into a level of vulnerability that stopped me in my tracks. It’s bare, beautiful, and scary, almost. I can’t stop listening to it. This one has been on my mind a lot lately—it’s simpler and more stripped back than some of the other tracks on the album, but it’s a crushing one-sided dialogue about unspoken understanding between two people. It’s a silent desire.
“If I” - BEAN.
“My words are ill-rehearsed ‘cause your forgiveness is the first time I’ve been loved even at my worst”
This is a local band I found through work, and this song is so good that I’ve texted it to at least 10 different people telling them to listen to it in the last month or two. It sounds like a Dijon song in a very sexy cool way. I’m obsessed with it.
“Crush” - Lola Young
“And I know that you are only passing me by / and everybody wants a piece of your pretty pie / but I think that I could more than eat it tonight / What did you have in mind?”
Lola came into the radio station I work at recently, and in her interview she talked about the feeling of having feelings for someone and knowing that it won’t (or could never) go anywhere, and sinking into that feeling. I told her that I’ve experienced that very specific pain, not allowing myself to lean into any kind of real feeling out of fear of rejection/failure/pain/whatever, and she recommended this song to me. It verbalizes those feelings in a painful but extremely self-aware way. This is the limerence anthem for the ages.
“Furniture” - Carol Ades
“Oh my God, I'm spiraling and I / It's happening again, even my friends are saying ‘Caroline, have you been sleeping?’”
God, I love Carol Ades. She has written some of the most poignant songs I have ever heard about feelings that I literally thought only existed in my own mind. Her debut album just came out, and I haven’t listened to it yet — you know when something is going to change your life so you avoid it at all costs? The songs I’ve heard from this project have crushed me (in both good and bad ways) and I’m not sure I’m in the emotional space to hear the rest of them, so I’ve been putting it off. I’m sorry, Carol! Coping with uncertainty is a theme in a lot of songs I love because it’s something I struggle with in just about every aspect of my life. I need to know everything all of the time, and I often let it get in the way. I’m working on it. Carol puts every feeling I’ve ever had into words I’ve never been able to say.
“Little Faith” - Ryan Beatty
“I didn't think I'd want to be here / But something told me I should stay”
This one is sweet and sad and hopeful. The way a tiny bit of faith can hold your hand and walk you through a tough time helps me feel like I can start to see a light at the end of a sad tunnel. I’m trying to claw my way out of it, and I know I will because I always do, but I’m searching for that light right now. It currently looks like a tiny little laser pointer at the end of a very, very long hallway, but I can see it.
If you find yourself sitting in any of these same feelings, or just want to hear a few good songs, you can listen to this playlist here:
[cheering] more annotated playlists!!!!
Adore you, Carly! Listening to this playlist and sending you so much love.