Best practices for sad songwriting

Don’t just write sad songs. Mary Gauthier said at Folk Alliance International 2023 that songwriters sometimes think they’ve just got a 6-pack, or worse, a 4-pack of sad crayons, when in fact we’ve got the whole emotional palette to choose from. On one panel, she said that vulnerability doesn’t just mean sadness, but it could mean telling someone you love them. Poet Veronica Esposito says therapy opened her up to being able to write about new themes and with new tones, saying, “the texture of my poems is now lighter and more introspective in an exploratory way, rather than focusing on the brutality that I felt.”¹

Sad songwriting can’t be merely self-involved. Then it’s an act of attention-seeking, not of service. Sharing your story is important, and your story is likely connected to a larger issue. Mary Gauthier says the deeply personal connects each of us to the universal.² Do research on your song subject. Again at FAI 2023, Leyla McCalla shared that her song Heavy as Lead is about lead contamination in Flint. Her daughter had had high levels of lead in her bloodstream. She realized the problem is systemic. In this way, getting personal can activate people. People get into activism often for personal and emotional reasons.³

Susan Cain says, “if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other.”⁴ Nick Cage says, “The utility of suffering, then, is the opportunity it affords us to become better human beings,” therefore sad songs are an opportunity to bear this out.⁵ Part of the job of the creator is to Create things for love of others. Artist rep, songwriter, and publisher Ralph Murphy says it’s not your job to sing listeners their diary—you must sing them theirs. The songs we love, we love them because they touch us, in his words, “They gave you you.”⁶

A song in service of others must have some hope in it. A hopeless song is easy to write.

! [[ The logic of despair isn’t for me —James Baldwin ]]

!About all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine —Woody Guthrie

Writing a despairing song is fashionable. Sad sells. We rubberneck at the story of the artist addict. An immature songwriting habit is to present oneself pitifully, overplaying one’s sadness. Turns out, You can be well-adjusted and a great artist. A good sad song doesn’t need to overdo it. Simplicity is hard-won.

!The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs —G. K. Chesterton

!Leave them something to imagine —Laurence Stern

Rilke cautions new poets against tackling the big subjects, like love and death. They’re hard to write about well.