Does music make you melancholy?

[thaibeachlovers]

I can't listen to music that I enjoyed back in the 60s and 70s without feeling heartache, as it was the best time of my life, and when I hear songs from that era it makes me wish I was still living then ( knowing what I know now, of course ).

 

I'm sure some don't feel anything.

 

How about you?

[giddyup]

Certain songs and artists trigger that feeling of nostalgia, Cat Stevens, the first Elton John album, Joan Armatrading etc.

[mikebike]

Nope. Still having the best times of my life! Love the nostalgic tunes, love the new tunes!

[pgrahmm]

Yes, it can take you back to different times & memories....

 

It's one of the few things that really can....

[thaibeachlovers]

1 hour ago, giddyup said:

Certain songs and artists trigger that feeling of nostalgia, Cat Stevens, the first Elton John album, Joan Armatrading etc.

I was lucky enough to see Armatrading in concert. She was tiny. All the way from America makes me feel sad, especially as I had a long distance relationship with my wife for a number of years.

[giddyup]

Just now, thaibeachlovers said:

I was lucky enough to see Armatrading in concert. She was tiny. All the way from America makes me feel sad, especially as I had a long distance relationship with my wife for a number of years.

I always loved "Down to Zero", she was pretty unique for that time.

[swissie]

Depends on what memories are connected to a particular song, but I tend to go with the OP.

For example, toward the end of year I always get to hear "Rudolf the red-nosed raindeer", making me cry in my pretzels for hours, combined with uncontrollable attacks of diarrhea. The song is so incredibly silly but never-dying, that this is reason enough for melancholy if not downright depression.
Cheers.

[swissie]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I was lucky enough to see Armatrading in concert. She was tiny. All the way from America makes me feel sad, especially as I had a long distance relationship with my wife for a number of years.

Wrong click, sorry

[swissie]

5 hours ago, giddyup said:

Certain songs and artists trigger that feeling of nostalgia, Cat Stevens, the first Elton John album, Joan Armatrading etc.

Elton John must be suffering from constant melancholy, since he must have realised, that his first album "Tumbleweed Connection" was the best he ever put out.
Cheers.

[bannork]

A good point thaibeachlovers- I cannot hear Rainy Day Dream Away by Hendrix without immediately being transported back to dawn in the Massif Central in France in 75 as our Mini climbed up through the bends on the mountain roads with the fantastic views stretching below as the sun emerged.

For me those were both great times and sad times so luckily I do not always feel regret when thinking of the past.

Life has been great to me since I have lived in Thailand the last 30 years so I can look back without too much pain, though I would love to check out some old friends I have lost touch with back in the UK.

Secondly, the music was so inspiring then that it still gives me a  tremendous buzz if not heard too often- Hendrix, Floyd, Rory Gallagher, The Who, The Dead, and so many others- some get the foot tapping just as earnestly as all those years ago whilst others like The Beatles, Gene Clark, Roy Harper, Nick Drake etc can still pull at the heart strings as before.

Really I think we were unbelievably spoiled music wise in the 60s and the 70s. So much good music in so many forms and nearly all available on youtube.

It is easy to feel nostalgic though, those times seemed so carefree, at least in the UK. I hitch hiked everywhere from when I was 15, slept on beaches, offered lifts to others when I first got a car- never felt in any danger. Jobs were plentiful, it seemed the world was your oyster.

And now when we watch youtube our musical heroes are old and wrinkled or dead and it reminds us of the finality of time.Those youthful days will never come back.

Never mind, rock till you drop!

 

[tutsiwarrior]

 

melancholia deluxe

 

 

I was following my mom's hearse in Cochabamba and thought that there should be some suitable music and started to hum this to meself, she had been killed in an accident and I was in shock rather than bereavement...my aunts in the car with me stared but they were a bunch of bolivian evangelicals and what did they know...

 

BWV 1042, adagio: a suitable dirge for any melancholic occasion...

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[tutsiwarrior]

then there are lost friends with

 

 

 

and

 

 

lost to drugs, madness, death, circumstances, etc...

 

 

Edited September 24, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[swissie]

No wonder that folks that spent their "youth" in the fabuluos sixties get a touch melancholy while listening to the music of that time.

And what a time it was: Automatic annual pay raises, the Beatles, the Hippies, long hair, peace on earth feasible, woman wearing mini-skirts. We thought it would never end. Well, it ended in the mid-70ties. Those times never to return. At least not until now "in the West".

So, if melancholy creeps up while listening to those tunes of that time = melancholy allowed!

May it suffice and serve as a quantum of solace to those that had the privilege to experience their youth during the fabulous sixties. I feel privileged.

Enough said, time to play some "Stones" right now. "Love in Vain" I haven't heard in quite some time.
Cheers.  

[dotpoom]

For sure. Too many to mention but I think many (not all of course) lyric writers are the REAL poets.

   When I listen the Sachmo singing "What a wonderful world"..... or Al Johlson singing "Mammy"..... I know there has to be a God.

[RBOP]

You must be a melancholy. Take this test to sure http://personality-testing.info/tests/O4TS/  

[Tarteso]

Music was part of my life, studying at the University, between ends of 70th and part of 80th, to get an extra money, I worked in a Disco as DJ, and in a radio station, playing music, so, actually, make me feel sometimes a "nic noi" melancólic but...

 

Good times!

[Tarteso]

Forgot to mention that the records were bought at the ROTA American Base, in Spain, so the listeners and dancers of track, in those years, entered in a real "shock"...with these new wave of fantástic American music!.

[bazza73]

I don't consider music makes me melancholy from the viewpoint of taking me back to the past. However, it can move me to tears with sheer beauty.

Try Richard Clayderman's " Ballade pour Adeline", Gheorge Zamfir's " Lonely Shepherd" or the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana".

Or if singers are your thing, Laura Branigan, Gerry Dorsey " You'll never walk alone" or Diana Ross. No disrespect meant to the thousands of other great voices. Damn, I wish I could sing.

[Andrew Dwyer]

19 hours ago, swissie said:

Elton John must be suffering from constant melancholy, since he must have realised, that his first album "Tumbleweed Connection" was the best he ever put out.
Cheers.

Tumbleweed was actually Elton's third album after Empty Sky and Elton John.

Elton John ( album ) was the most melancholy of all his albums in my opinion.

 

But, Daniel is the song which most makes me melancholy, my elder brother was a huge Elton fan and when he died aged 22 ( me,19)

my parents would play Elton's songs religiously.

" Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky "

[Juan B Tong]

Green used to be my favorite color.

[thaibeachlovers]

5 hours ago, RBOP said:

You must be a melancholy. Take this test to sure http://personality-testing.info/tests/O4TS/  

I am. Makes it hard listening to music as most seems to err on the melancholy side, then there are the artists that died unfortunately like Orbison, Harrison, Mamma Cass etc that bring a melancholy with them, even if the song is not associated with a significant event.

Any Presley song makes me sad because he really was the greatest, but died so tragically and so young.

[thaibeachlovers]

5 hours ago, RBOP said:

You must be a melancholy. Take this test to sure http://personality-testing.info/tests/O4TS/  

I am. Makes it hard listening to music as most that I like seems to err on the melancholy side, then there are the artists that died unfortunately like Orbison, Harrison, Mamma Cass etc that bring a melancholy with them, even if the song is not associated with a significant event.

Any Presley song makes me sad because he really was the greatest, but died so tragically and so young.

I love Blunt music, but most of it really is melancholy, so it was refreshing when he put out "Stay the Night", which really is a "happy" song.

Edited September 25, 2017 by thaibeachlovers

[thaibeachlovers]

20 hours ago, bannork said:

A good point thaibeachlovers- I cannot hear Rainy Day Dream Away by Hendrix without immediately being transported back to dawn in the Massif Central in France in 75 as our Mini climbed up through the bends on the mountain roads with the fantastic views stretching below as the sun emerged.

 

Really I think we were unbelievably spoiled music wise in the 60s and the 70s. So much good music in so many forms and nearly all available on youtube.

 

And now when we watch youtube our musical heroes are old and wrinkled or dead and it reminds us of the finality of time.Those youthful days will never come back.

Never mind, rock till you drop!

 

You know where I'm coming from then, for sure.

 

Whenever I hear The Eagles "New Kid in Town" I'm transported back to the 70s in a McMurdo bar where I heard that for the first time.

My year in Antarctica was the highlight of my life, so when I hear it I get melancholy as I know I'll never be able to go back there. Sometimes once is not enough.

 

Not for nothing do they have Golden Oldie stations that play only 60's and some 70's music. Notice that they don't have stations that play only from other eras. The reason is that it was, and always will be the best ever made.

 

Thanks be to U Tube, that we can watch and listen to the heroes of Rock and Roll, Pop, and folk.

Back when music VDOs recorded the groups staying in the same place for the entire song. I can't even watch new ones with their 3 second cuts.

[bannork]

Rock bands wrote tunes then, melodies that anyone can pick out of a song book and sing along to with friends on guitars.

The songs became ours, they belonged to us too as we sang along, part of our lives.

Have you ever had the experience where you have not heard a song for years, decades even, and then you hear it again somewhere and the words just come flowing back as the years peel away? What power music has on us!

But I hope you feel they may be more highlights in your life, maybe not so intense as the Antarctica but deeply satisfying in another sense. A family for instance, grandchildren.They can bring great joy.

Actually melancholia was fashionable in our youth- all those singer songwriters writing melancholic songs for all  those living in lonely bedsits. 

Here is a classic- 

But let us celebrate our lives, warts and all, and all those who mean something to us. 

 

 

 

[champers]

Only when listening to Leonard Cohen.

[giddyup]

1 hour ago, champers said:

Only when listening to Leonard Cohen.

 

[JHolmesJr]

Hootie and the Blowfish makes me yearn for a time long gone.

[Si Thea01]

On 9/24/2017 at 3:17 PM, thaibeachlovers said:

I can't listen to music that I enjoyed back in the 60s and 70s without feeling heartache, as it was the best time of my life, and when I hear songs from that era it makes me wish I was still living then ( knowing what I know now, of course ).

 

I'm sure some don't feel anything.

 

How about you?

 

You took all the words right out of my mouth.  Every Saturday and Sunday I stream live, from Australia, 2CH, which plays the music from that era.  Brings back some wonderful memories, of old G/F's, the good ones and some of the not so good. Thank god that as humans we have memories, what would life be without them?

 

Given the way that some carry on when posting on here they surely don't and must lead a miserable existence.  With our memories it certainly makes life worth while living, it's a shame that it's so short.

[tutsiwarrior]

Fall, 1968 and tutsi is busted for dope (3 joints): 'what's all this about then? I just wanted to "get it on and boogie" like everybody else...'

 

'yer lookin' at 1 to 5 fer possession ye worthless long haired punk...Vietnam's the place fer yew...'

 

'but I'm a poet...and an intellectual...'

 

'tell it to the judge...'

 

and I did and got a suspended sentence contingent on attending college until I was 21 y.o...kept me outta the draft...

 

 

contemplating 1 to 5 and considering my options...a felon with the law in pursuit...melancholia in the extreme...

 

 

[bannork]

What a kind judge tutsi- but then if you had gone to Vietnam you would probably have gone AWOL whilst on r n r in Bangkok.Just think, you could have been living in Supanburi since 1968/9           55555