Music can heal you in many ways, but nothing comes close to the salve of sad songs when you’re at your lowest. Imagine Emma, who comes home after a long and stressful day at work, dealing with tight ...

Psychologists and philosophers have long puzzled over why people enjoy songs about sad topics. Even more paradoxically, some of the saddest songs are set to upbeat tunes—The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye,” ...

Composer Cliff Masterson knows how to make sorrow sublime. Take his regal, mournful adagio Beautiful Sadness, for example: "When I wrote it, the feeling of the music was sad, but yet there was this ...

Nick Blackmer is a librarian, fact-checker, and researcher with more than 20 years of experience in consumer-facing health and wellness content. Listening to sad music can make you feel connected and ...

Source: David S. Soriano, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Emotion, in particular sadness, has played an important role in art and music throughout human history and across human cultures. Music, ...

Sadness is generally seen as a negative emotion, but we tend to find it pleasurable in an aesthetic context. What is the nature of pleasure that people experience from listening to sad music?

Composer Cliff Masterson knows how to make sorrow sublime. "When I wrote it, the feeling of the music was sad, but yet there was this beautiful melody that sat on top," Masterson says. Written for a ...

"When I wrote it, the feeling of the music was sad, but yet there was this beautiful melody that sat on top," Masterson says. Written for a string orchestra, the piece observes the conventions of ...