It's an age old debate..but why are sad songs so much more emotionally engaging than happy ones?

There's nothing more beautiful than a sad song

its just, we feel bad emotions alot more intensively than we do good emotions
id say that as a general rule, humans are more sensitive to sadness, depression, fear and hate, than they are to sunshine and happiness

I also think that everytime you heard a 'sad song', then you start thinking about some sad things that happened through your life. Maybe not all the time, but it happens a lot for me. Those song can be linked with melancoly, and other feelings that are not really sadness but which get close to it.
Us humans also tend to listen to sad songs when we're sad, maybe we should try some polka instead

Now when i listen to an 'happy song', then it just makes me happy, nothing else.

What is more, happyness usually last a few mins or hours, whereas sadness can follow you for days or years...

Yup', that sucks

I've seen a piece of a program, where they had done experience displaying various images to some people and analyzing their brain waves, people reacted about 5 times more to sad and disturbing images than the others (or remembered the sad/disturbing pictures 5 time more easily) (but I haven't seen the whole program, so I can't say if it was scientifically serious).

But Unity and Sunday Afternoon are emotionnal songs than I would considere positive, or maybe "humble", at least not sad, as well as Processionnal.

In fact, I'm not sure I'm so touched by sad songs, well if I am, I may only rarely ask for more (I don't need a song to have sad thoughts, hey^^), and maybe I tend to perceive sad songs as "humble", "neutral". Part of the reason is that I don't care about the lyrics that much when listening to music in a foreign language, so if the lyrics are sad, I'm not really aware of it, and even if I've read the lyrics, the music atmosphere is still dominant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_%28philosophy%29


To be honest, I think it's why I can't enjoy Dragonforce. It's just too fucking happy. At least Maiden have a bit of silly pathos to them...

I don't have anything to contribute to this thread... But I agree with dub above me about bands like Dragonforce. Most power metal, etc... Happy music is very hard to get into sometimes. Especially if its THAT happy.

I can get quite engaged by happy music. Stuff like the Polyphonic Spree, or Devin's happier stuff (Slow Me Down, Sunshine and Happiness, Fake Punk for example) really gets me going. Whenever I need a pick me up, those are my first choices. I usually actually try to avoid most straight sad stuff, but the thing about it is that sad music can be so beautiful at the same time. Happy music can be beautiful too, but at the same time, there aren't bands out there making as much happy music as there are making sad music.

Eesh, dont get me started on how many bands are makin' REALLY sad songs lately... its been pissin' me off lately..
All these blue'sy type/acoustic playin/relationship break-up/solo artists...
its jus' grrr!

I like the in-betweeny music..

but for some reason I never see Metal as happy or sad music... its more like anger music! with lotsa depth... its just awesome...

but yeah.. sadness is a strong emotion unfortunatly, and I can see why lots of people are doin' it ...

I'm much more emotionally responsive to happy/upbeat music than sad/depressing music.. apparently that makes me a weirdo:p

I love sad songs. Check out "Blinded by Blood" by Ulver, my favourite sad song ever.

Sad songs hit me much harder emotionally, I think i can more easily allow a sad song to influence my mood than a happy song.

Now that makes me sound like a gloomy bastard but on the other hand driving with DragonForce on full blast certainly puts a smile on my face and gets the adrenaline pumping.

I'm much more emotionally responsive to happy/upbeat music than sad/depressing music.. apparently that makes me a weirdo:p

Yes it does.

By the way, do you listen metal?

Yes it does.

By the way, do you listen metal?

Yep.. the DTB is my favorite, and a big syl fan as well. Mostly though, I listen to melodic metal(like sonata arctica) or power metal(i.e. helloween).

Sadness is juissance. People love to be sad, sadness gives something to humans that no other feeling can. It can go very far.

id add that, people like to see other people being sad as well
but mostly, just to know that they arent alone being sad
in a way they can easily relate to someone being sad