“Misery is the river of the world,” grunts out an energetically downbeat Tom Waits. “Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness,” replies the eccentric, upbeat author Italo Calvino. And, now also entering the Readers Recommend bar (you never know who might turn up), here’s Rob Spragg, aka Larry Love, from Alabama 3. He decides to do a spontaneous gig, as I’ve seen him do a couple of times, and, no matter what the subject matter or how upbeat the style, he dryly remarks, with a twinkle in the eye, and that gravelly voice - “Here’s another sad song for ya!”
For what is melancholy? It is more than sadness. It is a nuanced mix of emotions that seems steeped in articulacy. It implies there’s something to say about a state of mind and the state of the world. Arguably melancholy is as much a driving force to songwriting as any idea or emotion. Is it a functional form of depression? Perhaps. If so, it certainly served to be for the likes of Nick Drake, or Joni Mitchell, who later admitted to suffering from such a state throughout the writing of several of her most acclaimed albums.
The best known and earliest work on the subject is Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholie (1621), a scholarly analysis of proto-psychology, describing what was then thought of as an imbalance of the four humours. The first rock star of the genre, however, was undoubtedly the poet John Donne (1573–1631), known for his many erotic affairs, and lovelorn elegies on their passing. His poems range from the deeply intimate, earthy and sexual, to the most profoundly complex, and religiously ethereal. They include lines such as “Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies,” (Elegy II) and “The day breaks not, it is my heart,” (Stay O Sweet). In short, Donne was a something of a serial, but sensitive seducer, as well as sad, dirty sod, and had remarkable gift of the gab. Sounds like a successful formula. What kind of superstar he would be now we can only imagine.
Melancholy, however, seems to be most associated with two things. Lying down and being forlorn, and secondly, twizzling your abundant head of hair with a despondent look. Think of the mass of long locks and facial expressions Jim Morrison, a younger Neil Young or Amy Winehouse, and it gives a whole new dimension to that famous phrase from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet - “parting is such sweet sorrow”.
Yet even Marcel Proust, who spent a lot of time lying down on the sofa and munching madeleine cakes for comfort, described, with a number of characteristic sub-clauses, “that melancholy which we feel when we cease to obey orders which, from one day to another, keep the future hidden, and realise that we have at last begun to live in real earnest, as a grownup person, the life, the only life that any of us has at his disposal.” Melancholy is about facing the sadness of things. It may contain despair, ennui, depression, pessimism and weltschmerz, all of which hurts, but can it, as Susan Cadogan and others put it, “hurt so good”? Melancholy may even have a big dash of rebellion about it too, alongside a profound feeling of illumination. So even if you can’t do anything about it, you can at least describe it. And why write a 1,000-page novel when you can do a four-minute song?
Mexican culture has a strong fixaction with melancholy, stemming from tragedy and death. Is that why Morrissey, for one, is so popular in this region of the world? Is it the lyrics or the music? Your suggestions could imply both.
We can find melancholy everywhere – in the news, in our daily lives. And here’s some in a piece of art, such as this Australian sculpture seen in Berlin.
And then, in this rather profoundly sad but beautiful sight of a lost teddy bear on wet paving stones.
Melancholy runs through music like a message through a stick of rock. It is deep in the DNA. But perhaps of all genres, including country and folk, the strongest roots of the melancholy tree grow from the blues. “The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body,” says Nick Cave, who is among an army of rock and pop musicians, from the Beatles to the Stones to Tom Waits and Jack White and many more across the decades extolling the influence of Robert Johnson et al from the early 20th century onwards.
So now the RR bar is really filling up now with artists wanting to say something about the blues. Here’s Amy Winehouse with her big hair and melancholy smile: “Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.” How right you are, Amy. Now here’s Jimi Hendrix, who can play anything, but concedes that: “Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.” Alexis Korner chips in now, hinting how functional melancholy can be: “I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.”
Mahalia Jackson’s voice floats higher and louder than anyone at this week’s RR party. She herself finds the blues too dark, and puts in a word for a lighter side of melancholy: “Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.” And finally, comes a comment from an unexpected source – Peter Tork from the Monkees. Does he have a cure for the blues? No. Because the blues are the preventative cure: “Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins.”
So then, join this rich mix of melancholy songwriters and performers to suggest you many songs on this subject. This week’s maestro of melancholia is returning RR guru Ravi Raman. Place your songs in comments below by last orders (11pm BST) on Monday 31 August for the final results published on Thursday 3 September.
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
Tell us why it’s a worthy contender.
Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song’s words.
Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify or SoundCloud are fine.
Listen to others people’s suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist from readers’ suggestions, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com
There’s a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
Many RR regulars also congregate at the ‘Spill blog.
During the week of 19 September 2015 the glorious Guardian Readers Recommend blog is going to be 10 years old. There will be an informal celebration of this during the weekend of Saturday 19 September, with a meeting up from lunchtime onwards on that Saturday in London, near the Guardian’s offices. For more details, and possible other meet-ups around this time, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com or keep an eye out on the Readers Recommend topics appearing here each Thursday.
Interested in compiling and writing about a list of songs from readers’ suggestions? Email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com. Slots available from Thursday 10 September.
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