Music can do wonders. It can bring people together or rip them apart (especially true in the modern age of fandom insanity). Perhaps most importantly, music has the ability to heal us. It can help you escape or just let you know you are not alone. Music, as a format, tells the stories of humanity and while many of those stories are happy, there is sadly an overwhelming amount of sadness, depravity, and injustice on this planet we call home. When these stories and the emotions associated with them are condensed into a song, the results can often be haunting and upsetting. These songs are not meant to make you happy and instead, expose a side of humanity that many wish to forget or just straight up ignore.
Below you will find the five songs that I have personally found to be profoundly upsetting. While doing some research, I began to notice that many of the lists of "disturbing songs" I found had a completely different definition of what "disturbing" really means. This makes sense since people are affected by different topics differently, but only one of the SEVERAL lists I looked at had the first songs I thought of when considering making this list.
(It was originally going to be a long list of the most disturbing songs ever, but the person behind disturbingsonglist.blogspot.com has done a pretty good job already, so this is just a personal top five.)
"Frankie Teardrop" by Suicide
I found this song a few years ago and holy crap is it an experience. Although I originally had it playing in the background while doing other things, I quickly found myself stopping and just listening. The song tells the tale of Frankie Teardrop. Frankie has a wife and a kid to support. Frankie is not making enough money and to prevent his family from suffering makes a tragic decision. The constant drum machine that seems to be mimicking both a racing heartbeat and the machine that is daily life plus the genius usage of silence broken up by screams of terror, despair, and disgust combine to make the story absolutely terrifying. This one sticks with you. After my first time listening to it I felt nauseous and incredibly anxious.
"Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday
A truly heartbreaking song about racism and the lynching of African Americans. It gives me chills and brings me to tears every time I hear it.
"Me and a Gun" by Tori Amos
Inspired by her own experience with rape, this song is made more haunting due to the absence of any instrumental and is sung acapella.
"...A Psychopath" by Lisa Germano
Germano took the powerlessness and revictimization that many women feel/go through after surviving abusive situations and turned it into a song. What really drives those feelings home is the real 911 call that is playing in the background. Incredibly uncomfortable to listen to, even the singer herself had trouble sleeping after recording it.
"Daddy" by KORN
It is a song about a kid being molested. It is believed that Jonathan Davis was inspired to write this because he was molested by a babysitter as a child. What makes this song so upsetting is the ending that features Davis screaming and weeping while a lullaby is being played. Of all the songs I have ever discovered, this is the hardest to listen to from beginning to end.
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