“You might as well have raised a gun to my head.”
That’s a line from the first verse of “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me),” the first solo hit by David Ruffin after leaving the Temptations in 1969. And then it gets darker.
Musically, “My Whole World Ended” is uptempo, jaunty, but clearly tinged with melancholy. (It opens with a classical-inspired piccolo solo.) Lyrically, it’s as vivid a description of post-breakup clinical depression as you could imagine, especially the last verse:
Now my body is numb, I feel so senseless to the touch;
My life is so wasted without you; I guess I loved you much too much;
How can I face tomorrow, when yesterday is all I see?
I just don’t wanna face tomorrow, if you’re not sharing it with me.”
I’m sure I heard Ruffin’s hit a few times growing up, but I didn’t fully pay attention to “My Whole World Ended” until I heard it again as an oldie more than a decade later on CKLW Detroit in the early ’80s. It seemed like an odd oldie to still be playing, even in Motown. I was marveling at the total bleakness of the lyrics when p.m. driver Jack London came out of it and deadpanned “that song makes me feel so good!” as if he were playing, say, “Boogie Oogie Oogie.”
From that moment on, I came to regard “My Whole World Ended” as awesome, but in the fear-of-God sense of the term, not the praise given to a toddler. It was so incredibly dark, and irresistibly catchy. Motown was known for its sound-alike follow-ups. They pushed even further with Ruffin’s next single, “I’ve Lost Everything I’ve Ever Loved.”
Uptempo heartbreak has been a cornerstone of hit music from at least “Heartbreak Hotel” onward. Motown, as one reader points out, was built on bouncy despair, from “Where Did Our Love Go” to “It’s the Same Old Song”; from most of Marvin Gaye’s early hits to Gladys Knight & the Pips’ version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” and “I Want You Back.” There are two current contenders for most-universally-loved throwback of the early ‘00s and whether you choose “Yeah!” or “Mr. Brightside” tells me what you see in the inkblot.
But uptempo songs specifically depicting depression were a much smaller category. “Help!” by the Beatles was cited by several readers. Knight and the Pips had another one a few years later with “I’ve Got To Use my Imagination.” (“Darkness all around me/blocking out the sun/friends call me/but I just don’t feel like talking to anyone.”) The hit music heyday of 1983-84 is famous for uptempo-but-dark (“Every Breath You Take,” “When Doves Cry,” “Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]”). But the one that most fits here is “Dancing in the Dark,” about being ready for things to get better.
In recent years, with our greater emphasis on self-care, we’ve had Em Beihold’s “Numb Little Bug” that dealt with depression straightforwardly. Beihold seems cautiously optimistic these days on a just-released new song, “Maybe Life Is Good,” but that song isn’t being worked to radio yet.
The darkest hit song of all time was before my time. I came across Bobby Darin’s “Artificial Flowers,” already a long-lost hit, on one of those MOR stations we listened to for snow closings. Darin had wanted to one-up “Mack the Knife” with an even more grim show tune about the death of an orphan. I couldn’t unhear it and I’m pretty sure we didn’t get the day off school either. But that song was just depressing, not about depression.
I didn’t think any song could rival “My Whole World Ended” as a vivid portrayal of mental anguish, until Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.” That song isn’t just about depression but specifically about Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s different from “My Whole World Ended” because it’s both a post-breakup song and 3:02 of the narrator blaming himself.
I need to point out now that I love how both Kahan’s “Dial Drunk” and “Stick Season” are hits. I’m glad they got the pipeline flowing between Triple-A, Alternative, and Hot AC and Top 40 again. It’s good to have a new hit artist, something rare outside Country in the streaming era. The successful pop-leaning CHRs that I watch most closely powered “Dial Drunk” and at least one moved it back to power rotation recently.
But I get asked every few years about how society’s mood is being reflected through hit music. In recent years, you’ve barely needed an article to figure that out. Even before COVID, “Don’t Let Me Down” by the Chainsmokers defined desperate times, in sharp contrast to “Just Dance” or “Party Rock Anthem” or even “We Found Love.” The last decade or so has been bookended by a spate of sorrowful piano ballads. “Someone Like You” and “When I Was Your Man” then. “Daylight” now.
Kahan’s collaborator Post Malone was also his predecessor in unflinching self-examination on “Better Now.” When he made another breakup song that was bouncy, rather than merely morose, it was “Circles” and became one of the biggest multi-format hits of the last five years. It’s also interesting that Malone’s biggest recent hit, “I Like You,” is his biggest recent hit.
Songs can be dark and determined at the same time. Sia’s hits for herself and others have embodied that from “Diamonds” to “Titanium” to “Chandelier.” Those songs have clearly resonated in our times, and that’s reflected through the resurgence of “Unstoppable.”
A while ago, I wrote about how we didn’t have many of the songs of determination (“Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Don’t Stop Believin’”) that were so enduring at Classic Hits radio these days. That’s starting to change. Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” flips “When I Was Your Man” and turns it into “I Will Survive.” Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” seems like the sunniest record on the radio, but it’s a movie plot song about pushing through one’s troubles.
If Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” already a phenomenon, becomes a sustained hit, I’ve already contemplated its potential to be “Macarena,” the dance song which helped change the national mood and power a Top 40 comeback in 1996. Even “Hold Em” though is more determined than delighted. The verses are about waiting out tornados and killer heatwaves and thus, by extension, about partying like it’s 1999. In that way, like her last radio hits “Break My Soul” and “Cuff It” together.
It’s clear that “Stick Season,” written about fall, is helping listeners through their winters. Like Sheryl Crow and Hootie & the Blowfish nearly 30 years ago, it’s also giving pop and rock listeners a lot of what they might have gone to Country for. Country is doing very well now with the unflinching self-examination of Bailey Zimmerman, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll, and others. During the turbo-pop era of “Dynamite” and “I Gotta Feeling” at Top 40, I saw Nickelback’s hits suddenly disappear from libraries. Now their influence on Country and its overlap with Active Rock is much-discussed.
Last year, I named “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift the song of summer. On his podcast, AC radio veteran Mike Nelson commented that it wasn’t quite the “Walking on Sunshine” moment that you’d want from a summer hit. But it was bouncy, ubiquitous, and our souvenir of the Summer of Swift. And even before Malone, Swift’s ongoing self-critiques from “Blank Space” to “Anti-Hero” have been a large part of what her listeners identify with.
It will be interesting to see what happens as “Stick Season” gives way to “Training Season” to spring and summer. It’s interesting how our biggest multi-hit format now, “Lovin’ on Me,” is fun, uptempo, cocky, and running toward the daylight. “Stick Season” has been the catharsis that listeners need and will likely need for the foreseeable future. Like anything else in the hit music universe, all it needs is balance.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com