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Ever since I got Sirius XM and started listening to the different decades, I realized that the 80s gets me in a blue funk. I attempted suicide in 81 and grappled with the struggles of being an ethnic minority and gay in a decade that screamed intolerance to me. Other decades don't give me the same feelings. There are certain 80s exceptions, but songs from 1981-87 generally depress me. Anybody else feel this way?
I think almost anyone will agree that when we bond with certain songs (or even if we don't bond with them), hearing them again much later conjures up memories and emotions relating to the time period when you frequently heard them the first time.
To this day, certain songs transport me back to childhood, and I have a visceral reaction to the memories and emotions that accompany them. Other songs remind me of my college days, while others remind me of long gone lovers... I still bond with songs now; in a decade or two they will bring me back to this moment in time.
Some of these memories and emotions are happy, some are bittersweet, and some are painful.
So, if you were depressed for most of the 80's, reminders of that era will naturally remind you of that depression. Songs seem to be the most visceral reminders.
One thing I noticed though is that sometimes if I play a song I bonded with long ago many times now, it begins to lose its association with the past; the memories fade. It just becomes another song. That strong reaction seems to happen only the first few times you hear something after a long break, and then it becomes diluted.
I'm not suggesting you replay "100 Greatest Pop Hits of the 80's" over and over to cure yourself of melancholia (I wouldn't want to drive anyone to suicide). However, that would be one way to disassociate the songs (which are innocent, after all) from the negative emotions you associate with them. I would also reconsider the 80's too; while there was much that was ugly about them, there were good things too.
I find most songs bring back fond memories and enjoy thinking back to those times. There is one particular artist that always makes me think of a past boyfriend and although it didn't work out I still enjoy thinking back about him.
Anything from the mid-to-late 90's. It was not a great time for me, having to deal with mental illness, career struggles, and being generally unhappy about where I was as a young adult.
Early to mid-90's pop/soft rock music gets me, not depressed, but melancholy. It reminds me of simpler times, no responsibilities; just being an adolescent looking to entertain myself; that was the main goal. Songs like She's So High by Tal Bachman, Push by Matchbox Twenty, If You Could Only See by Tonic or Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, music along those lines just gets me in a weird mood.
Philosophically we should always be looking to entertain ourselves. Age is irrelevant. I don't get depressed, but I hear certain songs, notice the lyrics, and what they really mean. Also I I wish I could go back there, because I would be so cool and hip knowing what I do today.
Ever since I got Sirius XM and started listening to the different decades, I realized that the 80s gets me in a blue funk. I attempted suicide in 81 and grappled with the struggles of being an ethnic minority and gay in a decade that screamed intolerance to me. Other decades don't give me the same feelings. There are certain 80s exceptions, but songs from 1981-87 generally depress me. Anybody else feel this way?
Ironically I felt that period was the start of some fine gay acts who were 'out': Culture Club, Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Soft Cell, The Smiths(Morrissey), Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, etc.
But I won't question your emotional attachment with the era.
I would think a gay ethnic minority would really have trouble with 1940s and 1950s popular music. Aside from some black acts making headway in the 50s, those decades were filled with tame lilly white music with old conservative values, where homosexuality didn't exist in the music, and everything sounded like it belonged in a Norman Rockwell art book.
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