Happy songs are all alike, every sad song is sad in its own way. So Leo Tolstoy might have written if he’d been into music instead of literature. As with anger, a couple of days ago, there are different reasons why I’m sad, and different types of sadness seem to demand different types of music. Sometimes, sadness can require catharsis, at others, it requires sympathy, and at yet others it needs washing away. There’s a whole genre of nobody-loves-me songs which have their raison d’etre in the need to cry your heart out, Bridget Jones style, and take solace in the fact that you’re not the first to be lonely or suffer a broken relationship. We all have an inbuilt urge, it seems, to hear some sounds that recognise the pain we feel.
So there are far too many candidates for today’s topic for it to be an obvious or simple choice. But sometimes, sadness isn’t just about me and what I need, it’s about what those I love need. This song exemplifies that, to me. This is Coldplay, with Fix You.