Why do we love those sad songs so much? What is It with songs that help us wallow in our misery? Those post break up anthems, or songs about loss and depression that just seep of sadness yet draw us like a moth to a flame. Why do people love Morrissey and the Smiths' sad songs about been miserable? Because - like hot tea on a hot day that fights fire with fire - so too do sad songs quell the sadness in our collective hearts. Some say that we like sad songs of others' tales of despair because we can indulge in their suffering from a safe distance. Like in the comic strip above we love/hate those sad songs so much we have to hit replay. "Please Mr Please" don't play B 17. I don't ever want to hear that song again," sang Olivia Newton John on the weepy Bruce Welch & John Rostill penned 1975 international hit - but you know she secretly indulged in hearing B17 again despite the sadness it aroused in her tortured soul.  Of all the pop hits over the past several decades Elton John's Bernie Taupin penned hit "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" sums up our need for sad songs: "It's times like these when we all need to hear the radio.`Cause from the lips of some old singer we can share the troubles we already know. Turn them on, turn them on. Turn on those sad songs when all hope is gone!" and the song's clincher line, "it feels so good to hurt so bad"

It’s seven-thirty in the morning; I’ve just rolled out of bed after a weird and ultimately unhelpful dream about being accidentally tossed off the Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, after which I ended up drenched in water and yelling at Timothy Dalton, who was working as a security guard, for not believing that their stupid ride malfunctioned and landed me in a private parking garage.

Seriously. That’s what I was dreaming. Is it any wonder I’m awake an hour before normal? I mean, who needs that kind of crap? I am like, totally giving my subconscious mind the silent treatment today.

Two things are helping salvage my mood. One is writing this to you, of course. The other is listening to Jobriath.


This dude’s story is mostly tragic; one of the casualties of the music industry. He was glam at a time when glam had just started retiring. Bowie had already reinvented himself as a Zoot-suit wearing soul singer. Even so, Jobriath was promoted by Elektra Records as though his debut album would be more popular than The Beatles, and subsequently, God.

His half-naked frame was plastered all over cities at a time when we weren’t used to seeing such things. (I mean, nowadays it’s like, “Oh, a huge billboard of two, scantily-clad beefcakes frolicking in a pool together… in an advertisement for Toilet Duck.”) Jobriath’s first album was inescapable, and it hadn’t even been released.

So that, when it finally did hit the shelves, though it was critically acclaimed by many, it couldn’t live up to the hype that had come before it. Jobriath was eventually abandoned by his management and lived the rest of his life out in relative obscurity; his major legacy being an example to record companies on how NOT to handle a new act.