Being a 'Miserable' writer is it such a bad thing?

About 90% of my own material explored the darker side of human emotion.

I believe with happy songs there is only so far you can take it, but with despair, sadness and misery, there is no depth.

I have drawn a graph to illustrate my point.

A happy song can easily become 'cheesy' 'contrite' 'soppy' and lots of other adjectives...

With this in mind This is my latest song called 'Victim # 17,733' (another verse still to write)

Do I have a bullseye on my back?

Or big black letters that spell out attack?

I'm at my best when I'm under siege you see?

It's how I got by so it's a good job really

I'm your scapegoat

I'm your punchbag

I'm everything you hate

I'm your target

I'm your hostile

I'm the enemy of your state

To the outside world is that how I'm seen

Someone to be picked off, someone who is weak?

For your amusement for your bit of fun

Lets take a shot at the different one

I'm your ridicule

I'm your worthless

I'm your bad mood recepticle

I'm your put-down

I'm your kick me

I'm your joke and your spectacle

I'd like your general thoughts / opinions on anything I've mentioned.

Cheers

I disagree personally. If you are writing for commercial acceptance you will objectively have a hard time selling uniformly depressing songs. If you are writing for some kind of artistic purpose, you have to find your own way, but I don't think that the song being happy or sad per se makes the song any better, and having only a single emotional affect will almost certainly make the song worse.

Here are some previous threads on the subject:

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?t=2201868

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?t=1939379

Yeah... but mine has a graph!

As for my work, I write for myself... and the fact that it does well (enough for me to get paid for what I do) shows that on some level people relate to what I write.

I do have 3 or 4 happy songs I just find it easier to write sad ones. I guess it was my terrible and harrowing upbringing... But I try to use it positively.

A sad song can easily become 'whiny' 'self-absorbed' 'emo' and lots of other adjectives...

{censored}ty writing is {censored}ty writing, regardless of the subject.

Life isn't a bed of roses. It isn't a bed of nails, either. Songs that incorporate both the positive and negative aspects of reality, attract me more than those which dwell on only one or the other. Stress, struggle, and a possibility of hope are more interesting than a Simpsons' attitude. (Life sucks. You can't win, don't bother trying.)

I think all songs ought to come with presentation graphics. I'm particularly fond of pie charts, myself. (Hint for the next song, Jimmy.)

I can't say I write many happy songs, myself. (An erstwhile GF once got a probably depressing tour through more or less my whole oeuvre when she foolishly asked me to play her a traditional love song --basically a song of praise directed at one's inamorata instead of the Divine.)

But I like a good happy song. I don't run across that many, but that just makes them all the more special when they're stumbled upon.

I would agree on the pitfalls of trying to write such a song... or, for that matter, the pitfalls in writing the opposite, all well-delineated by partisans of both sides above.

As to Jimmy's song, I sort of like it but it feels about 4/5ths of the way there, somehow. But the missing 1/5th is arguably the most important: the punch line, the insight, the twist, the thing that pays me off for makint my way through...

Your CRIME SCENE suspenders are inside out.

Now THAT'S funny. . . . , (happy ?)

you write what you have to write about. you didn't decide how your brain would be formed.

feeling miserable while writing may help you find some boundries in your songwriting, you may want to try to balance it out with" hope"

I agree and find it far easier to write sad songs than happy songs! I don't think its a reflection on me as a person either. Its no coincidence for me that I write the best songs when im in a bad mood.

Just cause something easier doesn't make it preferable.

The best songs are upbeat songs with depressing lyrics.

Go write GOOD songs. That's what we need more of.

EG

Yeah. There are some great melancholy songs. Dark songs,etc. 9th grade Creative Writing 101 with a Cure t-shirt. But man... there is a lot of down right {censored}ty, {censored}ty crap that fits that description too. And because... why?

Why?

Right!!! Cause it is easier. That no news flash. I'm with you, Elias.

You need to put on your deerstalker hat, get out your pipe, and do some crime scene investigation of your own, methinks...

I'd bet a shiny cyberbuck that Jimmy's a Mac user and that's taken from his iSite cam.

For some reason that no one has ever been able to explain to me, Macs take all their front-facing cam pictures backwards. (There is a setting you can change to make it take conventional pics.)

Best explanation I've heard -- and it still leaves me scratching my head, bigtime -- is that people are used to seeing themselves in mirrors and so, to make them more comfortable, the Mac was designed to default to backwards pictures.

Oddly, few of the Mac users I've asked about this even realized their pictures were coming out backwards. I know that sounds really peculiar, but it is the honest truth. I've had to show people that their pics had backwards writing in the background and stuff because they didn't know what I was talking about. Weird, huh?

That's my excuse.

feeling miserable while writing may help you find some boundries in your songwriting, you may want to try to balance it out with" hope"

Nothing sounds phonier -- or more depressing -- to me than forced hopefulness and cheeriness.

Me, while I like a nice cheery song as much as the next guy, I get real solace and insight from serious works that talk about real life, and real life is seldom all lollipops and rainbows.

As Rodin (the famous sculptor, not the giant flying lizard) is said to have said, "The ugly can be beautiful but the pretty never can."

I only write "WTF-was that about?" lyrics, so

I only noticed because in my pictures I was holding a right handed guitar that looked just like my normal left-handed one.

I only noticed because in my pictures I was holding a right handed guitar that looked just like my normal left-handed one.

I wasn't aware of it until one of my clients sent me a bunch of photos he'd taken from his Mac and they were all backwards. Since I remembered my old 90's serial port webcam had a checkbox for 'mirror image' or 'flip' or whatever, I sent him a message back pointing out that his cam seemed to be in flip mode. He had no idea what I was talking about. I pointed out that the writing on a book in the background of one of his photos was backwards and he said, weird. I never noticed. I know it's not anything I did.

I wasn't so sure, but when I checked with Mac pals online, most didn't know what I was talking about but a couple said, no, that's the default. And, sure enough, it is.

I think at the end of the day you gotta follow your inspiration, but if I had to be strategic about it, I'd say that "miserable" songs can be just as stupid/silly/pathetic as happy songs. EMO anyone?

Based on the original post, you sound like a pessimist. I don't see why one emotion is wider than another.

I agree with you on the phonier stuff, but sometimes I think one must use that "forced hopefulness and cheeriness" in a state of "what would it have been liked" so using that approach opens up our "dreamville" state of creativity when writing

no it's not a bad thing... the majority of my music springs from pain, and I have a limitless supply... I know pain like "Bo knows" (fill in the blank)

Plus you can write a happy song without pretending to be happy all the time... This thread is kinda frustrating LOL

Like so many art forms, songwriting is about depicting extraordinary situations, events, feelings etc. It seems that there isn't much of a market for depicting mundane states of being in a song. So all songwriting is mostly about showing extreme experiences. The art is in giving the illusion that the experience is genuine and not something contrived.