Music Sad Eyes is a gentle rock song about two lovers parting ways. He expresses regret that she left on a trip or separation, saying they shared some good times together while apart and that he doesn’t want her crying anymore.
Participants took part in an experiment whereby they listened to six sad and six happy instrumental excerpts in counterbalanced pairs. The results indicated that thought content during sad music was dominated by visual mental imagery.
Lyrics
Sad Eyes is a ballad that tells the tale of an unhappily married woman, in love with an individual whom she suspects of cheating on his wife or girlfriend. Though her lover tries to comfort her, his efforts prove ineffective; eventually she leaves him and begins another relationship; ending this song with sadness in her eyes for whomever is present in it all.
The lyrics of this song represent many people’s frustration in relationships. A woman in the song laments her lover having left and being unable to provide what she needs; her frustration with him being met through music from its narrator.
Musically, it is a soft rock ballad that would have fit right in on easy listening radio in the late ’70s. Robert John had an exquisite falsetto voice reminiscent of prefabricated Brill Building doo-wop; additionally it includes weepy pianos and strings; Darlene Love from pre-Beatles days contributed back up vocals as an unexpected touch.
Though its lyrics may be sentimental, this catchy pop ballad with an underlying melancholy melody is immensely appealing to listeners. This was one of many non-disco songs to top the charts during 1979 when an anti-disco backlash reshaped pop music.
Human Touch was likely Bruce’s smart move when he decided not to include “Sad Eyes.” Its dense sound and content would likely have overwhelmed its companion tracks, yet this song deserves much greater exposure due to its twist ending – adding new shades with every listen. Furthermore, “Sad Eyes” showcases Bruce’s skill at writing deeply unsympathetic characters – such as its manipulative and self-centered protagonist narrator who manages to draw sympathy from audiences while remaining self-serving at once!
Music
“Sad Eyes” took several attempts before finally reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in April 1979 – tied with Nick Gilder’s single, “Hot Child in the City”, for being at the top for such an extended period of time. But finally it made history – coinciding with cultural backlash against disco giving rise to genres such as soft rock and country-rock music genres that had yet to emerge at that point in time.
Robert John’s hit embodied the melancholic mood of its time, depicting a man trying to end his affair while still caring about his former flame. Musically speaking, it features prefabricated Brill Building doo-wop along with studio rock elements like strings and Darlene Love (a holdover from pre-Beatles days), singing backup vocals.
Although the protagonist in this tale aims to end his affair, he seems stuck in an unhealthy cycle of caring too deeply about a “naughty girl.” As such, it becomes hard for him to free himself of such emotions and move forward with life.
Huron, Anderson and Shanahan conducted a questionnaire study reported in this issue to investigate whether instruments whose players are perceived to be highly adept at conveying sadness also produced similar acoustic features as those employed to convey sadness through speech. Such features may include slow tempos, low sound levels, dark timbre and small pitch and sound level variations – with those most highly associated with sadness capacity such as mumbling, dark timbre and lowest pitch being highly correlated – suggesting there could be a common factor at play affecting how effectively instruments convey sadness through music vs speech vs speech.
Playing micro-intervals could be one of the features best predicting sadness capacity judgments; these micro-intervals represent some of the smallest standard intervals found in Western instrument building traditions. But given that acoustic features only made up half of variance variance for sadness capacity judgments, other factors, including how often an instrument was used to express sadness and cultural understandings associated with that instrument likely also play a part.
Conclusions
While our findings are limited, they provide correlational evidence that can guide future experimental studies into testing how different acoustic features, including loudness (rms), sensory dissonance (roughness), and spectrotemporal variations (flux), may affect different aspects of feeling moved. Furthermore, they demonstrate how music may evoke both sadness and joy simultaneously – this may prove particularly helpful for individuals prone to engaging in negative thought and finding pleasure in its aesthetic aspects simultaneously.
Results show that music-induced movement correlates strongly with other evaluations and experiences, such as perceiving warmth in the chest or experiencing goosebumps, as well as higher levels of fantasy – suggesting it may be one of the main motivating factors behind listening to sad music. Furthermore, sadly moving excerpts tend to have greater associations with ratings of sadness than joyfully moving ones; however Oblivion showed an unexpected negative correlation due to its specific acoustic characteristics.
Overall, v0IV0 is an energetic slab that exhibits enough diversity in sound to generate momentary interest, yet falls flat due to a lack of musical personality or memorability. The relentless shredding and riffing is ultimately counterproductive to its goals as it denies listeners any chance to rest or familiarize themselves with its music; instead it offers audible contortions more interested in recalling past bands than creating its own voice.