When I’m feeling down in the dumps, I don’t need someone to come cheer me up. All I need is my QuietComfort Noise Canceling headphones and a song that understands. There’s just something about a sad song that makes it easier to breathe through the sadness instead of pretending like it’s not there to begin with. When I listen to a song about heartbreak or regret, I know it’s not trying to fix me or my problems. It’s just there to meet me exactly where I’m at.
I remember one afternoon back in high school, I was sitting on my chair, feeling heartbroken after I had just been broken up with. I put on my headphones, and a song about experiencing heartbreak and losing a partner came up. The lyrics were simple, but they said everything I wanted to say but couldn’t. The song itself is sad, yes, but I felt better listening to it.
Science tells us that listening to music we connect with can release dopamine, but it’s more than a chemical reaction that matters. It’s that feeling of being recognized. When someone else has felt what we feel, it reminds us that pain is part of being human. It feels better to know these bad feelings aren’t personal failures that reflect on us.
When life keeps moving, it’s easy to ignore the feelings that we should be paying more attention to. A sad song allows us to take a pause, to breathe and to cry if we need to.
We’re human; sometimes all we want to do is try and help someone. We want them to feel better immediately. That’s not a bad thing, of course, but sometimes we don’t always want to feel better right away. We just need to feel these hard things to get through them.
I don’t know why certain songs hit harder than others. I just know that when they do, it’s clear they’re doing exactly what they’re meant to.
When I’m sad, I don’t want someone to try and fix me. I want to be heard. A sad song does that. It listens in a way people can’t always do. It tells us that it’s okay to feel what we feel and that sometimes the best way to heal is to let the music carry it for a while.
