I Hate Myself and Want to Die is an amusing book written not just for collectors of kitsch and lovers of lists. Author Tom Reynolds has chosen the 52 most depressing songs you’ve ever heard and explains in detail why each deserves to be on the list. First, Reynolds points out the difference between a sad song and a depressing one. " Sad songs offer the listener empathetic comfort, reflection, and wisdom. Depressing songs just make you want to stick a Glock 9 in your mouth. Depressing songs don’t always need overtly depressing lyrics (hence the absence of lyrics in this book) since the horror can come from various musical missteps. . . One of the most egregious is the brain concussion modulation, or BCM.
BCMs are found near the end of practically every 1990s power love ballad sung by the Big Three: Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston," each of whom has a song in the book. It makes me happy to learn that someone actually coined a phrase to describe the horrible, yodeling, syllable-splitting, emotionally fervid, intensity tantrum, or HYSSEFIT, because my acronym would have been just too long.
Reynolds tells the story of each depressing song in a humorous way and he also includes the history. For example, even though he still finds things to poke fun at, you would have to be on a mood stabilizer not to be moved by the social implications behind "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday and "Brick" by Ben Folds.
