Vol. 21: Sad Songs Say So Much
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This article is also available as an audio edition, narrated by Ryan McVey.
Elton John once sang those words, and I think they would resonate as true to most people.
After all, when life gets difficult, many of us instinctively reach for music that reflects how we’re feeling.
Heartbreak often sends us searching for heartbreak songs.
Grief finds grief.
Loneliness finds loneliness.
It makes sense, right?
But I think there’s more to it than that.
The other day, I was driving to get my morning coffee and listening to music, as I always do.
It’s a short trip to the local Tim Hortons, so there’s really only time for one song to play. On this particular morning, Devil’s Work by Joyner Lucas came on shuffle.
By the time I pulled up to the drive-thru window, I had tears welling up in my eyes.
What is wrong with me? I thought.
It wasn’t even a sad song.
At least, not in the traditional sense.
It’s frustrated. Angry. Desperate.
It feels like someone demanding answers from God. But it certainly wasn’t the type of song Elton was singing about.
As I sipped my coffee that morning, I started listing every song I could remember that had made me emotional. One by one, I typed them into the Notes app on my phone.
Before long, I noticed something strange.
Many of them weren’t sad at all.
Some were angry.
Some were hopeful.
Some were triumphant.
Some didn’t even have lyrics that should make me emotional.
So if it isn’t sadness...
What is it that actually moves me?
Looking over my list, it became obvious that the answer was more nuanced than I initially thought.
Yes, some traditional sad songs move me. But sometimes it’s more about how the artist says something than the words themselves.
Take Adele’s Someone Like You, for instance.
The first few times she sings, “Don’t forget me, I beg,” it sounds beautiful.
But by the final repetition, something changes.
Her voice cracks—just slightly.
Technically, it’s imperfect.
Emotionally, it’s devastating.
Suddenly, it no longer feels like she’s singing a lyric.
It feels like she’s pleading.
That tiny imperfection somehow says more than perfect technique ever could.
Another example that gets me every single time is Kesha’s Praying.
It’s a powerful song about survival, forgiveness and overcoming trauma. It carries even more weight when you know the public story surrounding her years of personal and legal battles with her former producer, Dr. Luke.
But it’s near the end of the song, after she sings, “Some things only God can forgive,” that it gets me.
Her voice explodes into one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever heard on a record.
The lyric she belts out is simply:
“Yeah.”
But it feels like a release.
Like years of pain escaping in a single note.
At least, that’s how it sounds to me.
Now, if I told you Tupac’s Troublesome ’96 showed up on my list of songs that make me cry, I wouldn’t be surprised if that earned a few laughs.
Most people would describe the song as intense, raw or even aggressive.
It certainly wasn’t designed to make people cry.
Yet every time he reaches the moment where he yells, “I’m hopeless!” I believe him.
Not because of the words alone.
Because of the way he says them.
For a split second, it doesn’t sound like a rapper delivering a line.
It sounds like a human being admitting something painfully real.
Maybe it isn’t sadness that moves us.
Maybe it’s authenticity.
Maybe our ears are far better than we realize at detecting when an artist truly means what they’re singing.
Maybe that’s why a cracked voice can affect us more than a flawless one.
Maybe that’s why the most technically perfect performance isn’t always the most memorable.
Because perfection impresses us.
Honesty connects with us.
But authenticity can’t explain everything.
Some songs make me emotional before a single word has even been sung.
It only takes three or four seconds of hearing the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979 before I’m transported back in time.
I had already graduated from high school by the time the song was released, but for some reason, it immediately overwhelms me with nostalgia and makes me feel like I’m in Grade 9 again.
I don’t even have to think about it.
I’m just... there.
The people.
The places.
The feeling of being a young teenager.
It’s amazing how a few notes can unlock memories that have been sitting quietly in the back of your mind for decades.
The Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head does something similar to me.
Objectively, there isn’t much on that album that could be described as emotionally vulnerable.
Nobody would call it heartbreaking.
Yet hearing it immediately takes me back to being a teenager, drinking with friends in someone’s garage before stumbling home across a nearby school field.
Those nights are gone.
Some of the people are no longer part of my life.
But somehow...
the music remembers.
And we’re not necessarily responding to the song itself.
We’re responding to the life we’ve attached to it.
I know it sounds cliché, but music really does become a time machine.
A three-minute recording can somehow carry years of our lives inside it.
The song never changed.
We did.
Then there’s another kind of emotion entirely—one I’ve always struggled to put my finger on.
The best way I can describe it is this:
Have you ever stood in a packed arena while twenty thousand people sang the same chorus together?
If you have, you probably know exactly what I mean.
That feeling is incredibly powerful to me.
The song doesn’t need to be sad.
It doesn’t need to contain profound lyrics.
There’s just something deeply moving about thousands of strangers sharing exactly the same feeling at exactly the same moment.
For a few minutes, everyone knows the words.
Everyone breathes together.
Everyone belongs.
Scientists have spent years studying why music affects us so deeply.
Research suggests that music can engage areas of the brain associated with memory and emotion at the same time, which may help explain why a song can instantly transport us back to another chapter of our lives.
Researchers have also studied empathy and emotional contagion—the remarkable human ability to absorb and experience what we believe someone else is feeling.
Maybe that’s why Adele’s voice crack hits harder than a perfectly polished vocal.
Maybe that’s why Tupac’s desperation feels real.
Maybe that’s why Kesha’s scream feels less like a performance and more like a release.
We don’t just hear emotion.
We experience it ourselves.
Sometimes it’s the honesty of the performer.
Sometimes it’s the memories we’ve attached to a song.
Sometimes it’s the shared experience of hearing thousands of voices become one.
Sometimes it’s simply a melody, a chord change or a single note that reaches somewhere words never could.
Maybe that’s why music has always felt different from every other art form.
A song you loved at seventeen won’t necessarily mean the same thing at fifty.
Not because the recording changed.
Because you did.
When I became a father for the first time, my parents gave my daughter a book for me to read to her at bedtime.
It was called Goodnight, My Angel: A Lullaby, and it placed imagery alongside the words from Billy Joel’s song Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).
Joel wrote the song for his oldest daughter, Alexa Ray, after she asked him what happens when we die.
In it, he reassures her that the people we love continue to live on in our hearts.
Over the years, I would go on to read that story to each of my three daughters.
At the time, I was simply a young father reading a bedtime story.
I never imagined that one day those same words would take on an entirely different meaning after losing my own dad.
The book didn’t change.
The song didn’t change.
I did.
Elton John was right.
Sad songs do say so much.
But so do angry songs.
Hopeful songs.
Celebratory songs.
Even songs with no lyrics at all.
Music can celebrate our best days, help us survive our worst ones and quietly preserve all the moments in between.
It finds a way to meet us exactly where we are.
And quite often, it reminds us exactly where we’ve been.
Because in the end, music doesn’t just tell us someone else’s story.
Somehow...
it becomes part of our own.
This Week's Playlist
Every volume of Dad's Music Muse is accompanied by a curated Spotify playlist inspired by that week's topic.
This week's playlist explores the many different ways music moves us—from heartbreak and hope to anger, nostalgia and pure joy.