cheery or kinda depressing?

[FrostedxB]

I was wondering what style of music you HL2.netters like, the more upbeat type of music, or fairly soft and darker music (This is not a Techno v Screamo thread)

Its more like this ....

Cheery - Sido - Augen Auf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52emOs0WOAA

or

Darker, more depressing - Sido - Danke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD-2jZdw-GI


Please note as well, its not a debate between these two songs, just the general vibe given off by music.

 

[Sheepo]

Well my 6 foot deep puddle is CAKE which is defined by a more morose vibe. Even in songs displaying more uplifting messages and vibes there is a somewhat sad undertone to it all. So, darker I guess.

 

[gFrohman]

I can't say that I prefer one style over the other, but I do love the "sad yet hopeful" kind of songs a lot. Positive music is probably some of my favorite though (311 - "Stay positive and love your life"; pretty much my view on life too).
Sad music can be very expressive though (Dead Can Dance's The Host of Seraphim and Stone Sour's Bother, and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings come to mind for me - very dark, sad songs, but very powerful, imo).
Something that starts sad & depressing & ends hopeful/joyous are great in my book (take the last movement of Mahler's 1st Symphony for example).

 

[Laivasse]

Definitely depressive music for me. By it's very nature, music that is exclusively 'cheery' tends not to have much emotional depth, due to the fact that it glosses over life's negativity. You could make the counter-argument that extremely negative music is likewise glossing over life's positive aspects, but it holds less true because the very act of musical creation is a positive one. Furthermore it's possible for people to take a positive message from an emotionally negative piece of music, eg. the listener feeling uplifted by the fact that someone (the artist) understands their emotions, etc.

For good examples of depressive music, you can't beat the genre of Funeral Doom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmopO1LPnIU

Having said all that, my very favourite music always has to have a triumphant element to it, even if it is bleak for the most part. The emotional spectrum in music is probably a bit more complex than just a linear scale ranging from 'happy' to 'sad', anyway.

 

[SimpleAssassin]

This is one of the reasons i love the cure, they have a nice mixture of both. Throwaway pop songs and some of their older darker stuff back in the day when they were Gothic and Post-Punk

 

[Vegeta897]

I pretty much enjoy the whole spectrum of music moods; which ones I feel like listening to or not listening to of course depending on my mood.

 

[Letters]

Original post wasn't explained well at all... there's a difference between up-beat and happy and slow and depressing...

I guess it doesn't really matter, though, because no matter what, everyone's answer will be BOTH.

 

[Dalamari]

I'll usually listen to music that matches how I'm feeling at that moment, usually it's " " or "**** YEAH :bounce: "

 

[knut]

I don't like to think there is a line that really determines the mood of a song. A piece of music is what you make of it. Jesu's first album, Jesu, is one of the gloomiest, most downtrodden and heavy-hearted albums I've ever heard but yet I listen to it on a regular basis in a good mood and love every second of it. The same can be said for many, many bands that I listen to.

Overall, though, I would say I listen to alot more downtrodden music than I do something that might be considered uplifting, but that's only as far as generalizing a genre can go for the sake of not over-complicating things. Alot of music I like that some would consider depressing is actually very uplifting, whereas some pretty poppy and overly happy radio indie that I hear in college bores the **** out of me and doesn't do anything for me at all.

It's subjective, really, like everything else in music.

 

[Nibwoddle]

I personally prefer neither as I enjoy songs with a very specific subject or no subject at all. However some depressing emotional stuff can be great, such as Metallica's Fade To Black, much unlike their recent nerd angst ****.

 

[G(ordon)-man]

Both, most time cheery music though. No emo music.

 

[Muffin Man]

I personally enjoy music that I think that I could dance on top of a car to the most. Not a slow car, a damn fast one! Like NPH in the second Harold and Kumar. You know, pretty much anything with groove. Cake, Bill Withers, Duke Ellington, Rebelution, etc. etc. etc. So cheery, I guess.