Songs people sing when they are sad
I once heard from a friend that whenever she gets exhausted in the office, she gets this intense desire to sing Chaka Khan’s Through the Fire at the end of the day. I remember the song distinctly because I first heard it from a bar when a coed in the audience took to the stage, and sang Through the Fire with such intensity that I knew not a few people were infinitely curious exactly what she had been through. It was such an intense performance that whenever I hear the song today I remember that girl onstage singing it, microphone on her hand and tears welling from her eyes. And even up to this time I often wonder what was the sad story behind that girl singing Chaka Khan in 1999.

One person I know said that whenever he gets sad, all he needs to hear is the Beachboys’ Kokomo and he would forget all his troubles in an instant. This song must really be beloved because another friend told me that he imagines heaven with flying angels, white cirrus clouds and stereo playing Kokomo. The flying angels, my friend told me, he got from his catechism, the cirrus clouds he got from his fourth grade science teacher and Kokomo he got in 1993 when a distant radio was playing it on the beach on a full moon.

I took a survey of some people and I’ve come up with this list of songs people hum when they are feeling a bit blue:

1. Seasons in the Sun by Westlife.

2. Honesty by Billy Joel.

3. Please Release Me (Let me Go) by Tom Jones.

4. Ne Me Quitte Pas by Jacques Brel.

5. Take Me (I’ll Follow You) by Bobby Caldwell.

6. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

7. Tomorrow from the musical Annie.

8. It’s a Beautiful Life by Ace of Base.

My friend, who is apparently of the Roberto Benini weltanschauung, told me that the best way to cope with dejection is to deny its existence. Blast It’s A Beautiful Life to full volume, he said, and you are on your way to bliss—or Gollum’s schizophrenia, I added.

Songs or without songs, the wonderful thing about melancholy, my way of putting it, is that you always have the ultimate power to end it. If you really can take it no longer, you can always fling yourself down a precipice and be over it. Smells like teen spirit, wouldn’t you say?