"sad girl" Music and its consequences
did we lowkey just recreate the gender binary?
I have a really difficult time figuring out how to talk about music and gender.
I would say that, to an extent, I have done the work. I took the gender studies 101 class that had only one guy in it. I read (or tried to read) Judith Butler. I read Leslie Feinberg, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, bell hooks (The latter 3 were not assigned in that gender studies class, but rather I read them on my own volition). I spent nearly a decade on Tumblr learning the key terms and memorizing Marina and the Diamonds lyrics. I figured “Intersectional” feminism was better than “liberal” or “radical” feminism. I ate up Beyoncé self titled when it dropped.
When I started my graduate program many years later, I was faced with the issue of what to make my focus of study and whether or not to make “Music and Gender” one of my interests. This was something I often discussed with my colleagues — and something that surprised me was how many of us were just completely uninterested in taking that angle.
This is not to say we hated women or gender studies, but after being in the program for a while and reading some very rudimentary theory, it just felt…. weird. From the musicological angle, it seemed like everyone was too busy being deeply worried about Clara Schumann and her life. From the ethnomusicological angle (which was really an anthropological angle), it felt like there were more interesting ways to group people and practices. In both cases, it felt like both groups of scholars’ analysis was decades behind what some 16 year old on twitter has already written a 22 part thread on in 2018.
So in this case, it’s true that much of my analysis of women and music and gender has come from social media and my own readings. Whether or not that will be helpful or to my detriment in this case? Only time will tell.
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Intro
“Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills 'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold hunger hurts, but starving works when it costs too much to love.” Fiona Apple, Paper Bag
This is a topic that I think about almost every day and have wanted to write about for a long time. This is because it disproportionately affects the music I listen to on a regular basis, which makes it difficult to write about at all.
When I was still a teaching assistant, an activity that I did with some of my students in my classes was discussing the music that they listen to and their own personal taste, their perceptions of style, genre, and sound in general. Methods of listening to music, instances in which they would be listening to music. I found this particularly effective for a number of reasons: One, it got them talking (as is expected in a “discussion section”). Two, it got them talking about themselves, which would help me as the instructor. If one of my sections has made it clear to me that they really really Really like Kanye West, that might impact how I approach topics with them in the future. Third, it makes them think critically about themselves in their current position in life and how their environment and upbringing affects their listening habits.
I recall specifically using a passage from Daniel Levitin’s “This Is Your Brain On Music” to get some discussion going on music and upbringing — how the music your caregivers listened to affects your own taste. The passage I used, however, disappeared completely from my Goodnotes 5 app with only my notes remaining!
Anyway, it got me thinking about my own upbringing and how my own taste was formed. It is now time for me to out myself as a Musical Misandrist.
I made that up just now - It means completely unintentionally and without realizing, I listened to mostly female musicians and groups and continue to do so.
Why is this? Listen guys, I have nothing against male musicians. PLENTY of them are very talented and great people, I’m sure. My dad had me listening to Santana, Rush, Yes, Earth Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson, Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, The Beatles, just like everybody else, okay?
But influence wise, my mom won.
Not only would she pick me up from Pre-K blasting Janet Jackson’s Control and Rhythm Nation, but as I got older, she started explaining the songs to me. The stories were appealing! “Bills Bills Bills” by Destiny’s Child was a big one — she told me it’s about a guy who is broke and can’t pay his OR your bills. One time she fully sat me down just to make me watch Madonna’s “Material Girl” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and then made me share my thoughts.
Reader, I was in that car listening to TORI AMOS.
And it just didn’t stop from there. As the years went on, I couldn’t get enough of it.
But then as I reached adulthood, I began to feel weird about my taste. I didn’t know who Bob Dylan was until 2014, and then hadn’t heard a song of his that wasn’t “Blowin’ in the Wind” until 2022. I also didn’t know who Radiohead was until a solid 2021. Pink Floyd, Nirvana, The Beach Boys, Springsteen. The names kept piling up in both my academic and non-academic readings and circles. To this day, I’m still catching up on the “quintessential” artists that everyone else knows and loves. But in my defense, I was in too deep. They had gotten to me.
The sad girls.
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“SAD GIRL” Origins
"I wanna stay inside all day, I want the world to go away, I want blood, guts and chocolate cake, I wanna be a real fake . . . Feeling super, super, super suicidal." Marina + The Diamonds, Teen Idle
The first thing to point out here is that this phenomenon is overwhelmingly proliferated over social media.
It’s hard to really trace when any of this began, but as usual, the key players that are often found at the scene of the crime (especially if you’ve read my other posts) are Spotify and Tiktok, and to a lesser extent Twitter and Tumblr.
If your music taste is similar to mine and you are a Spotify user, perhaps you’ve been suggested by the app to listen to the Sad Girl Starter Pack playlist, which is described as, “Sapphic songs that defined your music taste as ‘yearning.’”
I believe this playlist appears slightly different from everyone, however I’ve always taken mild offense to these Spotify-generated playlists. A very popular one that I’ve mentioned in the past is Lorem. But the description for “Sad Girl Starter Pack” really gets me. Sapphic, referring to attraction between two women (often used interchangeably with lesbian/bisexual) and then Yearning, which is a major Gen-Z buzzword. I think this playlist started popping up around 2021 and has stayed since. When I scroll through, I am unsurprised by the artists who appear - Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Beabadoobee, Snail Mail, Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey. All people who I admittedly listen to. Some who I don’t listen to like Leith Ross, Lizzy McAlpine, Chappell Roan, Girl in red. And some things that are decidedly not sapphic or girls like Alex G, Beach House, Radiohead… I could go on.
Another thing that makes this Gen-Z/Millennial bait would be the title including the infamous “Starter Pack” meme that we were all obsessed with from about 2015 onward.
Here, I pulled these from the depths of my camera roll from 2016 complete with uncropped instagram screenshots JUST for your viewing pleasure.
These memes were popular, easy to make and relatable among the demographic - often using a collection of carefully curated images to convey a certain vibe, aesthetic, or archetype that people would be familiar with. In the same way, the Sad Girl Starter Pack on Spotify gives you an idea of what it means to be a sad girl, but in the musical sense.
I, and most others who have written on this topic, posit that the “sad girl” refers to a subset of music and musicians that have a tendency to convey a certain set of emotions, buzzwords, aesthetics, and associations that indicate that both the consumer and the listener are engaging in “sad girl” behavior.
This can include some or all of the following:
Yearning
Depression
Anxiety
Suicide
Failed relationships
Breakups
Womanhood
Identity
Something about your hometown
Religious trauma
Loneliness
“Rotting”
Anger/Rage
Unrequited Love
Pain in general
By now you're certainly thinking, "But any and all genres of music can AND do talk about all of these things!" And I'm not denying that fact, but there are several ways that it feels different this time around.
Ten years ago, those of us who were on tumblr remember that it had its own era of sad girl music and culture. It was a ridiculous cesspool of black and white gifs, blogs that promoted themselves by saying "follow for more soft goth", the Marina & The Diamonds, Halsey, Lana Del Rey gifs and lyrics being all over everyone's dashboard, the blatant promotion of eating disorders, the crooning Arctic Monkeys and The Neighbourhood and The 1975 pictures and quotes, I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous this was to the psyche of a teenage girl at the time. But we ate it up, as the kids say.
And as I have always said, everything that happens on Tumblr will inevitably happen on Tiktok. Tiktok's multi media-esque nature made it all too easy.
Thousands of videos of women pouring their hearts out or edits from Fleabag or fall foliage to a live version of Fiona Apple's Paper Bag, a song that hadn't been popular for decades until it blew up on Tiktok.
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Thousands of videos revolving around Mitski's “Class of 2013,” a song from one of her earlier albums Retired From Sad, New Career In Business blew up. This was an album that was a part of her senior project as a music student at SUNY Purchase. Famously, during her live performances, Mitski plays the whole song on solo guitar, using only one chord. During the climax of the song, she wails "Mom, will you wash my back this once and then we can forget? And I'll leave what I'm chasing for the other girls to pursue."
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A similar trend occurred with her song Drunk Walk Home, which is also literally her screaming.
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Duvet by Boa blew up seemingly out of nowhere, another decades old song that TikTok seems to adore, so much so that the band generated enough money and interest to release new music soon.
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A song by Haley Heynderickx called The Bug Collector has over 371,000 posts on Tiktok has trended recently, where young people put the song in the background while looking at themselves through the old filter, often with a sad or forlorn reaction to seeing an aged-up version of themselves — dystopian, I know.
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Phoebe Bridgers, another big name in the sad girl scene, is probably the most justified example. I mean have you ever read the lyrics to "Funeral"? She literally says, "Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time and that's just how I feel – Always have and I always will." Not to mention her famous relationship with Actor Paul Mescal, who was in Normal People, famously an important part of the Sad Girl Canon. Tiktok also reminded me that he was in the music video for her song “Savior Complex” which… ouch.
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I could give countless more examples, but these are just a few to highlight how the phenomenon is appearing today.
BOYS WHO CRY: Can dudes be sad girls too?
“Do you know I could break beneath the weight of the goodness, love, I still carry for you? That I'd walk so far just to take the injury of finally knowing you?” Hozier, Unknown/Nth
I mentioned earlier that on my version of the “sad girl starter pack” playlist, which we must remember was described as “sapphic,” several male artists appeared. Her’s, Alex G, TV Girl, The Smiths, Beach House, et cetera. Now we can argue all day about why Spotify made that description for that playlist, but I’m more interested in the implications here.
The “sad girl” is not literally a girl musician who is sad or makes sad music, but rather a musician who fits into the aesthetic or vibe of the Sad Girl Canon. I would also say that the music created by the sad girls also is mostly consumed by actual sad girls.
I’ll return to Tumblr, where I mentioned believing that this is where a portion of the sad girl phenomenon has stemmed from. Another popular Spotify playlist catalogs what was popular during “peak” tumblr - about 2012 through 2015. It’s mostly Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds, Tame Impala, The xx, Two Door Cinema Club, and I can hardly continue typing this because embarrassingly this was all I listened to in high school.
I think a few aspects play into this assortment of artists, the Sad Girls Who Are Dudes. Take all of the traits of the sad girls that I listed previously while adding the following
Pathetic
Non-threatening
Harmless, non misogynistic lyrics (mostly)
Pastoral or otherwise non-romantic lyrics
A sound on Tiktok that seems to never go away especially this fall is the "How I love being a woman!" clip from "Anne with an E" edited into "Would That I" by Hozier, a musician from Bray, Ireland who is known for his 2014 hit "Take Me To Church." I could write a whole separate post about how badly the internet has misconstrued this man's music, but I digress for now.
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Pretty much any song from the Arctic Monkeys 2013 album AM has trended like crazy.
I cannot emphasize enough the devastating impact Skinny Love by Bon Iver (popularized by Birdy — what a deep cut!) has had upon society. For Emma, Forever Ago is a quintessential album in the indie-folk canon, I'm sure.
Decades old No Surprises by Radiohead is another one that has gotten significant use and attention on Tiktok, particularly the clever edit that transitions from a doorbell ringing to the opening of the song.
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Other than the usual "Wait, Tame Impala is just a guy named Kevin?" jokes, his stuff is quite popular.
And another one of my favorites and a likely graduate from the Tumblr School of Music would be most anything by Frank Ocean.
All of these artists are often thrown in with the sad girl aesthetics, videos, playlists, edits and compilations. So for any sad boyz out there who were worried if this was gender specific, don’t worry, you can also be a sad girl.
THE SAD GIRL CANON
“I am my mother’s child. I'll love you ‘till my breathing stops I’ll love you ‘till you call the cops on me.” Lorde, Writer in the Dark
“Watch what you say to me, careful who you’re talking to. I’m on fire, baby.” - Lana Del Rey, Sad Girl
A few months ago, completely out of the blue, I chatted with my mom about what I perceived to be “Sad Girl” music. I figured she might have something to add, since she has been listening to music for much longer than I have and unintentionally cultivated most of my taste.
Out of sheer boredom and without telling her, I began to concoct an incomprehensible chart of what I believed to be the progression of sad/deep/dark music by Women in US (or adjacent) popular music to try to gather my thoughts. Note that neither helped and only stressed me out more.
Here’s why neither of these charts work for anything other than good natured fun and speculation:
This functions on the assumption that female artists are only influenced by other female artists
I probably got some of the dates/eras wrong
It doesn’t include a lot of genres, specifically if I knew more of country and folk this could look a lot different.
There are probably hundreds of important people and groups missing.
But musically, in just a list style, I think that many if not all of these artists mentioned would work as a part of the Sad Girl Canon.
Along with music, it’s safe to assume countless other forms of media would fall into this category. I’ve already mentioned Fleabag, any book by Ottessa Moshfegh, Joan Didion, bell hooks, Gillian Flynn, Sayaka Murata, and Sally Rooney. Movies like I, Tonya, Girl Interrupted, the Virgin Suicides, Pearl, and many more might encapsulate what the sad girls are discussing and often appear in Tiktok videos along with the songs I mentioned.
WILD WOMEN DON'T GET THE BLUES - "Sad Girls" and Whiteness
“I get so lonely I forget what I'm worth. We get so lonely we pretend that this works. I'm so ashamed of myself, think I need therapy.” SZA, Drew Barrymore
Even in what I read and listen to and consume, I find myself asking, where is FKA Twigs? Kelela? Sza? Could we also argue that much of Erykah Badu or India Arie's music is quite melancholy? Frank Ocean?
Naturally, there is a bit of "representation" (term I take issue with, by the way, but we don't need to get into that now) wherein we have people like Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Beabadoobee, Mazzy Star, Jay Som, and again, probably more that I'm missing, who have achieved success in their work as women of color. But the whole thing is making me feel like there is a lot more to be said regarding the correlation between the sadness and the demographic of the artists that Spotify is often suggesting next to each other.
Something my mom suggested, and that I don't know why this wasn't glaringly obvious to me at first, is that it's all just derivative of the blues as a genre, not necessarily in the musical style, but in the lyrical content and aesthetics.
"When a woman gets the blues she goes to her room and hides. When a man gets the blues he catch the freight train and rides." Clara Smith, Freight Train Blues
One of the few places and mediums where Black female artists had some agency and voice, and are revered to this day, I thought of Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Mamie Smith. I also thought about Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone. When working on a unit with my students about women and the blues, I recall an article by Hazel Carby that we used that asserted the representations of feminism, sexuality, and power in women's blues along with an empowered presence.
Carby's article specifically addresses black female sexuality, speaking out against injustice and sexual violence, and the different experiences between black men and women at the time. I still find it useful for analysis, because the lyrical examples that she incorporates could be argued to serve as something as a starting point for some of the "Sad girl" lyricism and aesthetics that we are seeing even today. Although the conversations, topics, and references are specific to the experience of these black female blues artists, the fact that they were singing about pain, sadness, infidelity, sex, mistreatment, in the early 1900's is not something to be ignored. This is coupled with the fact that I feel confident that many of these artists' influences and inspirations can be traced back to the likes of Simone, Smith, Rainey, and Cox.
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"You never get nothin' by bein' an angel child. You'd better change your ways and get real wild. I'm gonna tell you something, I wouldn't tell you a lie. Wild women are the only kind that really get by 'cause wild women don't worry, wild women don't have the blues." Ida Cox, Wild Women Don't Have The Blues
"Wild women don't get the blues but I find that lately I've been crying like a tall child." Mitski, First Love/Late Spring
I DON’T WANNA BE FUNNY SAD ANYMORE - Artists react to sad girl labeling
"You think my music is mellow, maybe I'm just exhausted." Phoebe Bridgers, Boygenius, Letter to an Old Poet.
“I'll quiet down if it's what you want. I understand I'm not the only one for you. So tell me what you're looking for. Is it a picture-perfect girl for you?” - Faye Webster, I Know You
It is at this point that we must remember that all of these artists are human beings and probably won't take too kindly to being pigeonholed into the "Sad girl" category.
I mean for God's sake, nobody wants to talk about how FKA Twigs' Cellophane, an absolutely heartbreaking song, got (for lack of a better term) Meme'd to death on Tiktok.
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Criticisms of the terminology have been leveled by many of these artists, including all 3 members of Boygenius (Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker), SZA, and Mitski.
In the video, Mitski reads a tweet that says "new mitski it's a big day for sad bitches."
She responds,
"You know… The 'sad girl' thing was, reductive and tired like five years ago and it still is today. I mean, I get this person means really well and I appreciate them . . . But let's retire the 'sad girl' schtick. It's over."
I think that a lot of these criticisms are in good faith, and remind me a bit of the writing of Rayne Fisher-Quann in her post, Standing on the shoulders of complex female characters.
“but, oh, it feels so good to be understood, even when it’s only as a caricature. this feeling is real because i have something to compare it to. i am in my fleabag era. i am in my yellow wallpaper era. i am in my phoebe bridgers era. i am fiona apple, i am eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, do you get it now, do you get it now. try as i might, i can only seem to understand myself through the fictions of the more actualized — and, just as i reassure myself that i am drawn to this media because of some predetermined, inherent sense of self, i wonder if it is creating me, too. who would i be if i stopped consuming things? what would there be left to feel?”
Along with why we can’t seem to look away from portrayals of female sadness and pain, from the grand unified theory of female pain by Leslie Jamison.
The moment we start talking about wounded women, we risk transforming their suffering from an aspect of the female experience into an element of the female constitution—perhaps its finest, frailest consummation. The ancient Greek Menander once said: “Woman is a pain that never goes away.” He probably just meant women were trouble, but his words hold a more sinister suggestion: the possibility that being a woman requires being in pain, that pain is the unending glue and prerequisite of female consciousness.
Though the quotes from most of these artists and writers speak for themselves, I think it would be fair to say that the “Sad girl” phenomenon is one that needs to continue to be monitored, and utilized with caution. It’s fun to categorize and label yourself, whether it was in Buzzfeed quizzes in 2012, starter packs in 2016, or playlists in 2023. The question remains, though, who do these labels serve? and why? Are they helpful for achieving collaboration or just furthering difference? Who might these labels be alienating along the way?
From the writing of Quann and Jamison, I feel that there’s also need for further discussion regarding the mental health aspect of the “Sad girl” phenomenon. “Sad” is already, perhaps, a reductive term to describe what young people are dealing with and experiencing during these times. Post initial COVID lockdown, statistics are pointing to there being something of a mental health crisis among those identified to be a part of Gen-z. Where do we draw the line when it comes to just being sad or being depressed or even romanticizing these experiences?
Sad Girls Today
"Don't know where you are right now. Did you see me on TV? I'll try not to starve myself just because you're mad at me." Billie Eilish, TV
Today, you can look up “sad girl” on Spotify and see that not only do they curate “Sad Girl Starter Pack” but also “Sad Girl Autumn” and “Sad Girl Sh*t."
The sad girls are some of the most popular artists on the planet right now - currently represented in the mainstream with the likes of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Taylor Swift.
As I write this, it is now fall, which means “Hot Girl Summer” the term coined by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, is concluded. But worry not, you can put on Taylor Swift’s 10 minute long “All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version)” to commence your sad girl autumn officially.
And while you listen to Sad Girl Starter Pack, don’t forget to eat your girl dinner, and do any girl math you may need in order to select your dish.
As always, thank you for reading and if you made it this far, I’m SO sorry!
Here is a very sparse and low-effort list of songs I enjoy recently:
If you want to know how to support me, is anyone hiring? Haha, that’s a joke! Okay it isn’t a joke. Seriously, I’ll do anything — this job market is bleak.
As always, feel free to reach out to me or let me know what you think!
So good! I relate to this so much. This article really opened my eyes to something that I just saw as a catchy phrase! Thank you Amanda