sadness in disguise

anyone can make a sad song. choose a minor key, quietly strum a guitar, layer some atmospheric drones and sing about depression. it has been done a million times, and it will be done a million more. and not to say there’s anything wrong with that, some of the best and most moving songs of all time have adopted this formula (lua by bright eye and re: stacks by bon iver both immediately spring to mind).

but the songs which hit you the hardest, are the ones which are veiled in a cloak of false joy. the ones you could listen to on repeat whilst smiling and bopping your head, grooving to the bassline, or humming the vocalists melody, until the penny drops and the world comes crashing down around you. a punch in the gut, a knife in the back, a betrayal of your emotions. these are our favourite songs which do exactly that.

i’m writing this on the day phoebe bridgers’ latest record lost weekend is released, ending a 6 year hiatus without solo music. there’s plenty of tracks from that record which fit the bill (lost boys is the obvious pick), but when approaching this list there was another phoebe bridgers song which takes the prize.

kyoto at first presents as a shimmering indie pop song, recounting bridgers’ time spent in japan on tour. she muses about her band visiting the arcade, and using japan’s infamous bullet train. even when bridgers touches on sadness in the opening moments (she mentions wanting to go to the arcade with the band, but couldn’t bring herself to) we brush it off as a charming image of tour lifestyle. but as the song develops, and when you listen closer, phoebe bridgers cunningly paints a brutal father-daughter relationship. it’s hard to describe just how real and intimate a view of this relationship we’re given, but hopefully a couple of the songs most wrenching lyrics will do the trick: “i wanted to see the world through your eyes until it happened, then i changed my mind.”, “he said you called on his birthday, you were off by like 10 days, but you get a few points for trying”, and maybe most heartbreaking-ly “i’m gonna kill you, if you don’t beat me to it”.

tricks guises itself in indie sleaze, with a catchy guitar riff, driving drums and hooky vocal hiding the churn beneath the surface. if this track, or most of stella donnelly’s beware of the dogs in fact, came on the radio whilst your driving you wouldn’t bat an eyelid, tapping your fingers along to the catchy world she constructs.

but whilst donnelly delivers the lyrics with a smile, the reality is anything but. tricks accounts a relationship with a brutal, nationalistic and at times borderline abusive individual who only values the narrator for sex. donnelly paints vivid images of this character ruining evenings with friends, repeatedly failing to get clean and consistently and throughout only valuing the narrator when it’s for her “tricks”. it’s an incredibly powerful moment on what is a stingingly poignant album.

mac was perhaps the master of this genre, not only in his consistently shining production but also in his casual, offhand delivery. we’ve included both perfect circle and god speed here, but really it is the latter that earns this double-track a place on the list. god speed fuses a celebratory and explosive beat with mac’s cold, harsh realisation that his exploits and drug use aren’t sustainable. given what we now know to be true in mac’s passing, this is a truly tragic masterpiece from one of the greatest to ever do it.

bodysnatchers is full to the brim with an insatiable energy, the type that simply cannot be contained and must be danced to. it’s overspilling with genius guitar licks, just the right amount of distortion and a drum part that makes you want to stick your head through a wall in sheer ecstasy.

in fact, the track’s energy is so intense that it’s easy to ignore what thom yorke is saying, but once you do take stock that energy because all the more sinister. radiohead provide a brutal image of disassociation, panic and modern life, leaving what once seemed like a rock anthem into a neatly packaged panic attack.