Do you have a song list or particular artist that reflected the way you feel?
I grew up on The Police and Sting. So many songs to relate to loneliness, isolation, failure, regret and depression. Was the soundtrack to my clinically depressed adolescence. I remember even as an under 12, with childhood depression, picking the inherent sadness out of ABBA songs, which of course is why they used ABBA for the soundtrack to Muriel's Wedding, a movie about escaping toxic parents/childhood and finding the positive and making the best of life regardless of the limited resources you have.
As my anger grew during teen years, my appetite for heavier music grew, although I initially loathed it.
Guns N Roses channelled my anger out, my first heavy band.
Specific songs I relate totally through mental illness -
Dirty Creature - Split Enz (paranoia, anxiety, depression)
Metallica - a true mental illness sufferers band
Ride the Lightning
Fade to Black (depression, emptiness and suicidal ideation)
Master of Puppets (substance addiction)
Sanitarium (committed to mental asylum)
...and Justice for All
Harvester of Sorrow (regret, hatred and desire for revenge)
Frayed ends of sanity (tick every mental illness box)
Dyers Eve (reflecting on psychological abuse by parents and its crippling effect on your life)
Sad but true (your inner tormenting voice who is actually always there for you, your best friend, whether you like them or not)
The Unforgiven (resentment of lifelong manipulation by others in power of your destiny)
The God that failed (reflecting on parental abuse through religious extremism)
The Struggle Within/My friend of Misery (people who unrelentingly cling to their victimhood rather than getting on with their lives)
Load
Ain't my - (putting up with people who will drag you down)
2x4 (the desire for revenge)
House that Jack built (the temporary escape but downside of substance abuse in escaping from reality)
Ronnie (mentally ill people ending up as mass killers)
Reload
Low man's lyric - regrettably where a lot of mentally ill people end up, homeless, on the street and unable to break the cycle)
Unforgiven II (Emotional abuse from partners)
FiXXXer (reflecting on parental abuse and the substance abuse used to escape, perhaps even suicide)
St Anger
Pretty much entirely a mental health issues album, done whilst they were in group therapy, not ironically
Death Magnetic/Hardwired to Self Destruct
Pretty much most songs a mental health song. Issues.
