I have a playlist called “I Heart Melancholy” and I love listening to it so much it hurts.

In the good way.

And I know you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

I asked people on Instagram about their sad song proclivities and oh, it struck a chord! (A minor chord… hahaha… music humor—it’ll never really be funny, will it? That’s okay, we don’t need it to be funny. We just need it to be sad.)

The Instagram commenters acknowledged their penchant for somber songs that led to wallowing, brooding, and as one person admitted, “curling up over there in a ball crying after listening to The Dance by Garth Brooks.”

As I type this I’m listening to “Cry” by Cigarettes After Sex (there are no tears but I will probably repeat the song two more times just to get the full funereal feeling, then happily doodle the image for this post).

Fun fact: The Husband used to call my melancholic tunes “slit your wrist music,” but now he likes moody music, too… so I guess we’re both in peril?

Melancholy gets a bad rap. In music, though, sadness can be a feature—not a bug—of somewhat decent psychological health. Listening to sorrow-tinged music can regulate our emotions, deepen meaning, and even knit us closer together. In other words: a good ache set to music can be good for us.

Why do we long for sad sounds?

Are we gluttons for punishment? Of course we are.

The classic paradox of sad music is that we often choose it (and then benefit from it). Listeners reported in a large survey that sad music helped them regulate negative moods, feel consoled, and experience aesthetic pleasure—prime motivations for pressing play on their down-tempo playlists.

One solution to the “are we crazy to seek out depressing music” paradox is that sadness piggybacks a different positive state: being moved. Experiments show the pleasure of sad music is mediated by feelings of being moved—a special emotion that mixes tenderness, poignancy, elevation, and a few dignified tears. Anthropologists use the Sanskrit term kama muta to describe this emotion. For many of us listeners, the sadness intensifies that moved feeling, which is why the song we cry to can also be the song we cherish. Look at us, wanting to feel all the feelings.

Susan Cain—the badass author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole—says it so well here:

People whose favorite songs are happy play them about 175 times on average. But those who favor “bittersweet” songs play them almost 800 times (!!!) according to a study by University of Michigan professors Fred Conrad and Jason Corey, and they report a “deeper connection” to those songs than those whose favorites made them happy. They tell researchers that they associate sad music with profound beauty, deep connection, transcendence, nostalgia, and common humanity – the so-called “sublime” emotions.

Yes, nostalgia. Melancholic music can trigger the bittersweet emotion that researchers link to oodles of upsides: greater meaning in life, social connectedness, and a stronger sense of authenticity. If your “sad banger” (did I just say banger?) happens to be from a personally important era—oh, like high school—the pangs can come bundled with warmth, belonging, and self-continuity (unless, of course, the pangs come bundled with being an undatable outcast, in which case you must play “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” by The Smiths very, very loud).

If you think of music as an emotional Swiss Army knife, melancholic tracks are like precision tools for mood regulation. Psychologists have found that across adolescence and adulthood, we use music strategically to fine-tune energy, vent, reflect, or reframe; sad songs often serve the “reflection and understanding” function. Music can be therapeutic—unless we use the jaggedy wood saw part of the Swiss Army Knife. Right on cue…

Sad songs help… unless they don’t

As always, content and context matter. The same studies that celebrate sad music’s benefits also imply a need for boundaries. If you’re high in empathy and listening with an intent to process your tangly feelings, odds are good you’ll feel moved and soothed after a melancholic music medley. Woo hoo! Good cry.

If you’re rumination-prone and using music to amplify grievance(s), though, the playlist can become a loop you don’t want and the next thing you know you’ve slashed your ex’s tires. (It’s kind of clear how to distinguish between adaptive strategies like reflection and reappraisal from maladaptive ones like dwelling and avoidance, right? Right?)

A simple rule of thumb from the evidence: Use melancholy to metabolize, not to marinate. Choose songs that feel poignantly beautiful rather than annihilating… notice whether you end a track with more perspective and calm vs. unmitigated despair/ smoldering rage… and pair the listening with actions that are restorative rather than crawl-back-into-bed-inducing—journaling, a walk, a call to a friend.

Melancholic music isn’t emotional self-harm with a melody. It’s a thoughtful way to visit sadness under the supervision of beauty, it’s a way to feel kama muta. As the science keeps showing, a little well-scored sorrow can do a lot of psychological good.

Here is a list of your favorite sad-sack songs, as collected from my Instagram post… maybe an “I Heart Melancholy” playlist is on your horizon with the help of a few of these deliciously depressing ballads?

• Make You Feel My Love — Bob Dylan/ Adele
• You’re the Inspiration — Chicago
• Nothing Compares 2 U — Sinéad O’Connor/ Prince
• What’s Up? — 4 Non Blondes
• More Than Words — Extreme
• All by Myself — Eric Carmen/ Céline Dion
• Birds of a Feather —Billie Eilish
• Love of My Life — Queen
• No Hard Feelings — The Avett Brothers
• Just Say Yes — Snow Patrol
• See You Again — Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth
• Home — Foo Fighters
• Nutshell — Alice in Chains
• How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore — Prince
• Stronger Than Me — Amy Winehouse
• I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You — Tom Waits
• The Backwards Walk — Frightened Rabbit
• Somebody — Depeche Mode
• 100 Years — Five for Fighting
• And So It Goes — Billy Joel
• He Stopped Loving Her Today — George Jones
• All Dogs Go to Heaven — Chris Young
• July — Noah Cyrus
• This is me trying — Taylor Swift
• Single — Everything But The Girl (EBTG)
• Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
• Right Here Waiting — Richard Marx
• Fix You — Coldplay
• If This Is the Last Time — LANY
• The Dance — Garth Brooks
• Let Me Be Sad — I Prevail
• Rainy Days and Mondays — Carpenters
• November Rain — Guns N’ Roses
• Who Will Save Your Soul — Jewel
• Wicked Game — Chris Isaak
• Nothing at All — Rob Dougan
• Slipping Through My Fingers — ABBA
• Lost Boy — Ruth B.
• If You’re Not the One — Daniel Bedingfield
• Shallow — Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga
• Earth Song — Michael Jackson
• I Want to Know What Love Is — Foreigner
• Broken People — Kerry Muzzey
• On the Nature of Daylight — Max Richter
• Spiegel im Spiegel — Arvo Pärt
• Porgi, amor — (Mozart) Renée Fleming (performance)
• Beim Schlafengehen — Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs)
• Gone Away — The Offspring
• God Only Knows — The Beach Boys
• Take It With Me — Tom Waits
• Adagio for Strings — Samuel Barber
• Changes — Black Sabbath
• Without You — Harry Nilsson/ Badfinger original/ Mariah Carey