The Spotify Saddest Songs Report Clearly Hasn't Listened To Emo Kids' Playlists

Crossword Solver has found the happiest and saddest popular songs on Spotify, courtesy of EmoLex, the emotion lexicon that tracks eight basic human emotions, such as anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy, and disgust.

EmoLex also finds positive and negative associations throughout English words, which makes it the perfect tool to reveal the happiest and saddest popular artists on the streaming platform.

Looking at the list of Saddest Songs In The Charts based on lyric sentiment, we couldn’t help but notice that all of these mainstream pop songs have nothing on emo kids’ playlists. And quite frankly, it’s stunning that indie/emo crossover artist Phoebe Bridgers doesn’t even appear on the list with Motion Sickness or I Know The End.

According to EmoLex, the Saddest Songs in the Charts are Kendrick Lamar’s Humble, Supalonely by Benee, Sad! by XXXTentacion, Until I Found You by Stephen Sanchez, Falling by Harry Styles, followed by tracks like when the party’s over by Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber’s Sorry, Lost by Frank Ocean, and many more. 

Besides that Billie Eilish tune, none of these mainstream songs come close to the emotional devastation of a Mayday Parade tune like Miserable At Best or the one we’ve included in the image above, Terrible Things.

The ultimate emo playlist made by Spotify user barto contains some real sad songs, from Linkin Park’s Numb, to the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus classic, Face Down - a song about a woman experiencing domestic violence that we screamed along to as thirteen-year-olds. 

Miserable At Best is also on there, as well as blink-182’s mournful banger, I Miss You, a whole lot of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Simple Plan, Paramore and Flyleaf. 

On my own emo playlist, created in 2013 (I was 17), you can hear I’ve Given Up On You by Real Friends alongside The Night I Drove Alone by Citizen, Pine by Basement - you know the words: “I hate myself, but that’s okay,” and the most emo Paramore song, When It Rains.

If I made an emo playlist today, I’d be throwing in Never Meant by American Football (surely in one of my old playlists), some stuff by Jawbreaker, Tonight Alive, Camp Cope, and my favourite emo band in recent years, Pool Kids.

What I’m curious about is this: are emo kids built different? We don’t always have to be sad to listen to sad music, and when we’re listening to this brand of guitar-driven sad music, it’s pretty damn devastating. But it’s a healthy outlet; it’s music that’s always there for you. As the AbsolutePunk tagline said: “music mends broken hearts”.