Every great rock song is usually based on positive energy. When the first rock artists were coming up, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the name of the game was to make the most high-energy rock song you could, mostly centred around having a good time at a party. However, once the genre started to expand, artists like Nirvana and Radiohead showed the world just how sad rockers could be.

When discussing the more depressing side of the spectrum, the ears ultimately turn to the ballads in an artist’s catalogue. Since the slower songs are usually meant to be emotional, it’s not out of the question for rockers to make their best material out of sad events, either pulling from their real life or conjuring up heartbreaking stories that leave the listener in stitches by the time the track is over.Then again, the sadness in these songs usually comes from what the songwriter pulls out of the listener. Although the musician might live a separate life from what their audience sees every day, there’s a subtle truth to their tune that puts a mirror up to the crowd, making them take inventory of their life and realise just how dire things might get if they aren’t careful.Despite having tearjerkers in their arsenal, a handful of artists can’t even bring themselves to perform the songs live in concert, thinking that they will get too choked up and unable to perform correctly. Maybe they wrote a tune that was too close to the bone, or maybe the marriage of melody and story is too heartbreaking for anyone else to get through.

10 most depressing rock songs:

10. ‘Black’ – Pearl Jam

None of the heavy hitters in grunge could claim to write optimistic music. As soon as Nirvana kicked the door down for the Seattle sound to go mainstream, it was expected that most of the material would deal with heavy topics that veered towards the darker side of life. While Pearl Jam gave fans their fair share of dark trips across their debut album, Ten, the most vulnerable that Eddie Vedder ever got was writing one of the bleakest breakup songs of all time.

Inspired by a relationship that fell apart years previously, Vedder paints colourful imagery across every verse of ‘Black’, coming to grips with the fact that he’s lost one of the most important people in his life. As Mike McCready brings in various Hendrix-inspired guitar licks, Vedder practically cries midway through the song, lamenting how quickly the sun can drop away.

Instead of the bitter sentiments of rock and roll breakup songs, Vedder is only left with nothing but pain, knowing that his significant other will have a beautiful life someday and wondering why he can’t be there with her to see it. That pales in comparison to their version on MTV Unplugged, where Vedder adds cries of “WE BELONG TOGETHER” in between the final verses. Although the grunge revolution didn’t have its share of power ballads, this is one of the nerviest songs about love lost the alternative scene could ask for.

9. ‘Wish You Were Here’ – Pink Floyd

It’s never easy to come to terms with losing a band member. Since most groups come up together, there’s a certain ‘Three Musketeers’ style of camaraderie, as if everyone in the group had the power to take on the world. Even though Pink Floyd managed to see the greatest fortunes of the music world, they were guilty about losing one of their own.

Before they had even reached the top of the mountain with Dark Side of the Moon, the downfall of Syd Barrett’s mental state was an uncomfortable cautionary tale that the band members had to experience in real-time. Now that they were one of the biggest acts in the world, Wish You Were Here was a psychological exploration of what it meant to be a rock star, knowing the pitfalls that come with it.

Although tracks like ‘Welcome to the Machine’ showcase the dark side of the business, the title track is a poignant tribute track for Barrett, wishing that there was some way the band could let him know that they had finally conquered the world. Then again, they did get their wish a few days into recording, with Barrett showing up unannounced before quietly exiting, never to see the public eye again. The man may have been there in physical form, but the Barrett the band knew had faded away long ago.

8. ‘All My Love’ – Led Zeppelin

It usually takes the strength of an entire industry to keep an average rock band going on the road. Compared to what the musicians have to slog through, the massive amount of time and commitment devoted to ensuring a show goes off without a hitch would be enough to make any average worker collapse. Between the mammoth stadium shows Led Zeppelin performed in the late 1970s, Robert Plant got the shock of a lifetime when he got a call from back home while on tour.

After suffering from a short battle with a stomach illness, Plant’s son, Karac, passed away while the frontman was on tour. Completely distraught about losing his child, Plant pours every piece of his soul into ‘All My Love’ on the album In Through the Out Door. Played like a stately ballad, Plant sounds like he’s coming to grips with the death of his son, doing his best to put on a stern face to let his son know that he loves him unconditionally.

Though the song bears a subdued tone compared to Zeppelin’s previous work, any type of massive riff or crushing drum fill from John Bonham would have surely hurt the song if taken out of context. This track is meant to capture the experience of grief, and by playing the song as soft as possible, Plant hit on the sound of a lonely father desperately trying to hold himself together.

7. ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’ – John Lennon

As the 1980s began, it looked like John Lennon was about to start a completely different chapter of his life. After spending years away from music raising his son, Double Fantasy showcased a man happy with where life has taken him, finally able to take in each day on its own and adapt to life as a house-husband. While there’s nothing tragic about the song ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’ on principle, it’s what happened a few months later that would make the song absolutely heartwrenching.

Despite a few lukewarm reviews of Lennon’s latest release, things came to a standstill when the former Beatle was shot outside his Dakota apartment building in December of 1980. While most of the music world grieved for losing one of the most important figures in rock history, Lennon’s dedication to his son Sean is a sullen reminder of what kind of domestic bliss he was awaiting.

Throughout this delicate ballad, Lennon is beaming with positivity for his son, saying that he can hardly wait to see him come of age and promising to be there for him at every turn. The song even managed to strike a nerve with Lennon’s former writing partner, with Paul McCartney breaking down in tears when listening back to the song following Lennon’s passing. Knowing what would happen to him, hearing Lennon sing about what his son would grow up to feel too bittersweet, waiting to see the man his son would grow up to be that would never actually come to pass.

6. ‘Nutshell’ – Alice in Chains

One of the biggest stumbling blocks throughout most of the grunge scene centred around heroin. Before the alternative rock sound had blown up, the notorious drug had already claimed the life of Andy Wood and would further complicate the life of Kurt Cobain once he gave in to the needle. While both frontmen had their fair share of problems junking up their veins, Layne Staley had to deal with his body withering away slowly throughout Alice in Chains’ career.

Firs,t talking about his issues on the album Dirt, their acoustic EP Jar of Flies was where Staley decided not to leave anything to the imagination anymore. Although most of the previous efforts drape heroin behind the guise of an upset woman, ‘Nutshell’ is the sound of Staley naked in front of his audience, crying out that he has no one to cling to and that he feels that he has to fight this battle with his demons all alone.

Hearing Staley sing that he would feel better dead was a dark omen of things to come, appearing worse for wear on MTV Unplugged before his body finally gave out in 2002. Although countless songs have been written about struggling with drugs throughout rock history, this isn’t about fighting against the monkey on one’s back. Staley had been fighting for long enough by the time he recorded this tune, and the desperation in his voice was the sound of a man finally giving up.

5. ‘Songbird’ – Fleetwood Mac
Anyone who has ever dealt with a breakup is bound to feel something while listening to Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours. From the animosity of ‘Go Your Own Way’ to the shining optimism of ‘Don’t Stop’, the crumbling relationships between the band members are being played out throughout every track, with each songwriter giving their take on what their former flames mean to them now. While Christine McVie was getting divorced from bassist John McVie, ‘Songbird’ was the final prayer for her ex-husband.

Knowing that the relationship had run its course, McVie isn’t holding back any pent-up emotions in this song, letting John know that she will not be crying for him anymore. Although there might not be any romantic feelings for him anymore, Christine is still counting herself lucky to have someone like John to depend on, moving on to her next relationship without any guilt about what her bandmate might feel.

That’s not to say that she is still hurting, though, with the bridge detailing how she wishes John all the love in the world while hoping that she could have a fraction of that kind of romantic devotion with someone once again. Christine might be able to take a dignified approach in public and on stage, but whenever she started performing this song, she couldn’t hide the raw emotion she captured. When responding to whether or not she would perform the song anymore, Christine said that she would take it out of that because she didn’t want to cry again.

4. ‘True Love Waits’ – Radiohead
Even for a decade as jaded as the 1990s, Radiohead were one of the kings of making heartwrenching songs. While no one expected the band that wrote ‘Creep’ to come out with a feel-good party song, Thom Yorke’s shaking voice is enough to give anyone mild depression just by association. Although ‘True Love Waits’ remained one of their most impressive ballads live, it became an avalanche of emotion when it finally met a studio release on A Moon Shaped Pool.

Swapping out the acoustic guitar of the live version for a freeform keyboard approach, most of the tune is Yorke playing the song in the most stoic way possible, saying that he will do anything just to make sure his lover stays with him for a little while. Whereas the song could have been about anyone when first recording it, Yorke had a clear target when putting the tune out as the final song of the project.

Written as he was going through a separation from his wife, Yorke is aching with emotion, wishing for just a little more time for her to stick around, claiming that he will leave everything behind if it means she comes back. Considering that Yorke’s wife would pass away from cancer soon after the album was released, the stunning silence at the end of the track confirms that that unrequited love was never reciprocated.

3. ‘Something in the Way’ – Nirvana
For a band known as one of the leaders of a generation, Kurt Cobain was never known to be the most intelligible lyricist in the world. Throughout Nirvana’s Nevermind, it’s hard to get a handle on what Cobain is getting at half the time, sounding like he’s taking different pieces of poetry out of a hat and throwing them into his song with little regard for structure. As fans reached the final song on the album, Cobain said more with one phrase than most people could over ten minutes of material.

Recorded lying on a couch in the studio control room, Cobain delivered a haunting version of ‘Something in the Way’, detailing the story of a man living under a bridge. Although not everyone could relate to living off of grass or drippings from the ceiling, Cobain’s despondent cries on the chorus were indicative of what every member of Generation X was feeling at the time.

After being told that everything was alright for most of their lives, Cobain captured what it felt like for kids who didn’t have it all together, feeling that there was something stifling them from reaching their true potential. Even if they seemed to have life figured out, every kid going through their adolescence has had to deal with what Cobain is getting at in this song in one form or another. Nothing will shake that feeling overnight, but Cobain could at least remind kids that they weren’t alone.

2. ‘Tears in Heaven’ – Eric Clapton
There are more than a few times that Eric Clapton managed to tarnish his reputation. From the questionable decisions that he made back in the 1960s to his radical behaviour towards Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic, ‘Slowhand’ has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way across various generations of rock history. While that would lead to fans not caring about his happiness, Clapton did experience a pain that no parent should ever have to go through.

While his father was on tour, Clapton’s son Connor was at home with his mother when he accidentally fell out of a window, passing away after being recovered by medical assistance. Although most rock stars would not want to talk about a loss like this severe as long as they live, Clapton poured his heart out into ‘Tears in Heaven’, where he wonders whether or not his son would ever recognise him should he make it to the afterlife.

Compared to the massive ego that Clapton has had in years past, he has never been more vulnerable than in this song, saying that he doesn’t belong in heaven since he could never be there for his son that fateful day. While there’s no closure that can come from losing a child in an instant, Clapton at least takes comfort in knowing that wherever Connor is now, he’s no longer suffering.

1. ‘Hurt’ – Johnny Cash
By the start of the new millennium, Johnny Cash was in the midst of one of the biggest career renaissances of any country legend. After hooking up with Rick Rubin for his series of American recordings, Cash gained respect amongst a new generation of rock and country fans, especially through his renditions of songs from the likes of Tom Petty and Soundgarden. With his time on Earth coming to a close, though, Cash put the perfect exclamation point on his career with his jaw-dropping cover of Nine Inch Nails’s ‘Hurt’.

Granted, the industrial rock version of the tune would have been enough to make rock fans weep as Trent Reznor contemplates what he could have done differently amidst the journey on The Downward Spiral. While Reznor’s take on the song is a reminder of just how twisted one’s fragile mind can get, Cash blows the song up to near biblical proportions, looking back on his life and taking inventory of all the mistakes that he’s made along the way.

As he looks death in the face, Cash still harbours regrets about what he has done in the past, knowing that he would be able to find a way to be redeemed if he had the opportunity to start his life over again. Although the lyrics paint a grim picture of what lies ahead, Cash isn’t singing like he’s going to be condemned to Hell. This is the sound of a man who knows that he’s made a lot of mistakes, desperately pleading his case that he deserves to be let into Heaven.