I’ve had my fair share of long, tragic nights. Lying motionless at three in the morning, leaving tear and snot stains on my pillowcase, as Elliott Smith warbles mournfully in my headphones. Staring numbly at the ceiling and silently mouthing the words to Frank Ocean’s “White Ferrari.” You know the vibes! Let’s be real, there’s no fun in that. But being dragged out to the club as you’re moping over a boy who doesn’t care about you, getting wasted, and after hours of mediocre remixes, hearing the pounding opening bars of “Dancing on My Own?” Now that’s fun.  While weeping in bed alone can certainly be tantalizing, I prefer to find my catharsis doing the Charleston. There’s nothing quite as freeing (and foolish, and poetic) as dancing as hard as you can with tears rolling down your face. This is where the Sad Banger comes in: a bouncy, upbeat pop song that is somehow crushingly sad at the same time; devastating lyrics masked by bubbly synthesizers.  A sad banger is the best cure for heartbreak. It lets you wallow in your grief right up until the infectious chorus, in which you can almost picture your heart knitting itself back together. Lorde is great at this, as are Carly Rae Jepsen, Robyn, and ABBA. Scream the bridge of “Supercut” in your friends’ faces and imagine your ex getting their comeuppance, or howl “Tears Dry On Their Own” to the moon, while heading home from the bars. It’s intensely therapeutic. We’re in a bit of a golden era for sad pop—mildly depressing ballads and raps permeate the radio nowadays. However, a true sad banger must not only slap and/or sadden, it must also provoke the urge to down a shot and prepare to sob beneath a disco ball. For it is a true sad banger that lets one ascend to a higher realm of being, where an experience that feels so isolating when alone in your bedroom, becomes a universal, exhilarating, liberating tragedy.  Although no one’s returning to the club—let alone weeping hysterically there—anytime soon, I’ve compiled a nice little hors d’oeuvre of Sad Bangers in the playlist below. Cry and dance your heart out! 

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