SOUNDTRACKING SORROW
The impact of expressing grief, trauma, and loss through music on both the creator and the listener is undeniably, viscerally potent. It acts as a collective cathartic force to help listeners process their own anguish, helping them to somewhat re-track what’s been derailed and, even if only for the song’s duration, feel less alone in their pain as they struggle to move forward.
Songs about traumatic experiences, by their very existence, contain within them the understructure of overcoming.
“There's a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There's also happiness to it if you want to hear it.” – B.B. King.
The technical differences between the wail of the blues, the thrash of heavy metal, the swagger of funk, and relatively milder classic rock seem irrelevant against the backdrop of a front-line truth: Grief as part of the human condition, by definition, embeds itself into all forms of musical expression. It crosses genres and erases the technical lines dividing them, transmuting the pain of loss into a semblance of relative stability.
In a culture that treats emotion as valuable only when it sells, iconic songs reject that false equation, refusing to let profit dictate feeling.
As a Gen Xer, diving back into the ’70s and ’80s archives (earchives?) feels instinctive — those eras shaped how I hear music. What’s even better is watching Gen Z rediscover it through reaction videos; seeing their genuine excitement for songs from my time is plain wonderful.
Six standouts:
“Black Night” Charles Brown, Aladdin, 1951
Extremely influential on the West coast blues sound with 7 R&B hits throughout the 1940s-1950s (“Drifting Blues” and “Merry Christmas Baby” among them), the famed singer’s elegant, relaxed style only intensifies the raw anguish of his delivery here: “Well I’ve got no one to talk with/To tell my troubles to/Don’t even know I’m living/Since I lost you/Black night is falling/Oh how I hate to be alone...”
A classical pianist who merged jazz elements with blues, Brown said of himself, "I would not call myself a blues singer. I think I'm a ballad singer, because I sing my ballads my way, and yet they sound like blues." Brown’s soulful croon has an unforgettable quality that will linger in your head long after the music stops playing, or doesn’t.
“Crossfire” Stevie Ray Vaughan, In Step, 1989
As the world found out, the searing guitar of the Texas blues legend was way more than enough on its own to claim that status almost from note/chord/day one. And then came the high-octane voice along with it. The song spotlights dark, second-to-second stress: “I need some kind of kindness, some sympathy/We got stranded/Caught in the crossfire.” It’s a primal lyrical survival scream that the word melody alone could never begin to capture.
Killed in a helicopter crash in 1990 at thirty-six, Vaughan’s distinctively sensational guitar work and vocals are the gift and the price of nowhere near enough time.
“That Was Yesterday” Foreigner, Agent Provocateur, 1984, Atlantic Records
The passionate mourning and remorse made magnificent by Lou Gramm’s powerhouse rendering contains a thread of resilience dominant throughout: “That was yesterday/I had the world in my hands/It’s not the end of my world/Just a slight change in plans.”
Inducted into The Rock and Roll of Fame in November 2024 after decades of beautiful, intensely emotional chart-topping songs (“Jukebox Hero,” “Urgent,” “I Want to Know What Love Is” among them), the honor was long overdue.
“Baker Street” Gerry Rafferty, City to City, 1978, United Artists Records
My mom regularly played this over brunch at our regular diner in Queens in the late 1970s, the iconic saxophone wailing brightly out of the hand-crank mini jukebox just above the tabletop. (“Dust in the Wind,” another song listed in this review, was another available hit selection released the year before City to City).
A soulful and world-weary ballad tinged with sadness and the heaviness of staying the course within it, Baker Street became a smash on both sides of the Atlantic in 1978, reaching #2 on the US Billboard 100, No. 3 on the UK singles chart, and claimed the #1 spot in Canada for four weeks. It remains a gut classic loved the world over.
Scottish singer/songwriter Rafferty wrote Baker Street during a particularly challenging period, both personally and professionally (the perfect storm for the angst cauldron from which the best songs often emerge), amid record company contract disputes. The song has a pendulum swing in mood and tone: “Winding your way down on Baker Street/Light in your head and dead on your feet,” giving regenerative way to “When you wake up it’s a new morning/The sun is shining it’s a new morning, and you’re going/you’re going home” Rafferty’s expression of quiet, exquisitely alchemized desperation is a groove and a comfort.
“Dogs” Pink Floyd, Animals, 1977, Harvest/Columbia (UK, US releases)
Although "Wish You Were Here" is the primary PF song linked to grief and the loss of original front man Syd Barrett, different shades and sources of pain show themselves with Dogs. I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that any other band could more vividly depict the casualties of the
cutthroat business world, whether in a predator or prey role. and the all-consuming consequences of causing or tolerating professional interpersonal fuckery as a lifestyle: “And as you lose control/You’ll reap the harvest you have sown/And as the fear grows/the bad blood slows and turns to stone.” Following this shattering moment of reckoning, a psychological wrecking ball of a line: “And it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around/So have a good drown as you go down all alone/Dragged down by the stone.” The band’s massive talent for exposing and exploring the darkness of society is a now 60-year-old presence and unstoppable force.
“Dust in the Wind” Kansas, Leftoverture, 1976, Kirshner/Epic Records
An inescapably beautiful song that broke new emotional ground on timeless themes of mortality and futility, with poignant classical touches (violin solo). fitting for the classic, the song became: “Don’t hang on/Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. It slips away/And all your money won’t another minute buy...”
Then-lead singer/songwriter Kerry Livgren revealed the inspiration source for the song was a book of Native American poetry whose verses he incorporated into a fingerpicking melody.
Transmuting anguish into anthems helps listeners birth new beginnings and heal soul injuries, however scarred the landscape and horizon may be. Through them, what seems like a reason to stop becomes a reason to continue.