“Jeremy”
by Pearl Jam
Mental health phenomena addressed: bullying/school shootings.
Key lyric: “clearly I remember, picking on the boy, seemed a harmless little fuck”
“Jeremy” was prescient, ahead of its time even if it was based on an event that had already happened, it announced a new cultural phenomena the way few pop or rock songs ever have.
On January 8, 1991, Jeremy Delle, a 15-year-old sophomore, shot himself in front of his second-period English class.[14] The incident inspired the Pearl Jam song “Jeremy“.[15]
Wikipedia
Released in 1991 (you could’ve told me ’95 and I’d’ve believed you), 8 years before Columbine, “Jeremy” would define the decade it was released in, and sadly, the decades since.
According to Vox in 2019, here are some stats that highlight the insanity of living in America.
- “America has more guns than people”.
- As of 2019, “on average, there were around one mass shooting for each day in America”.
- At that time there had been “more than 2,000 mass shootings since Sandy Hook”.
- And yet, “support for gun ownership has sharply increased since 2000”.
The Japanese have a socio-psychological phenomena called HIkkomori in which “is characterized by adolescents and young adults who become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years.”
Both phenomenon seem to impact the exact same demographic, one I was once a part of: socially flawed young adult males, with wildly different outcomes.
“Everything to Everyone”
by Everclear
Mental health phenomena addressed: insecure attachment presenting as people pleasing.
Key lyric: “you try to be everything to everyone”
Everclear lyrics, typed out, can seem kitschy, or even cliche. But in pop music, the simplest lines are often the most powerful.
“My daddy gave me a name, and then he walked away” and “you would take me to a movie, you would take me to the beach, you would take me to a place inside that was so hard to reach” are lines not many besides Art Alexakis can pull off.
Hell, this write-up on “Everything to Everyone” could just as easily be about paternal abandonment explored on their hit “Father Of Mine”, or relying on medication to feel normal in “Amphetamine”, or anxiety about relying on medication to feel normal in, “Normal Like You” in which Alexakis sings, “the prozac doesn’t do it for me anymore”.
A Brief Aside For So Much For The Afterglow
So Much For The Afterglow is the reason I started writing this article in the first place, and is an album that I started coming back to on an annual basis over the last few years.
Sometimes you listen to an album every day for 2 years and then forget about it for 15. Sometimes, when come back to that album it provides an insight into a broader genre trend: struggles with mental health as discussed throughout the Alternative Music genre (as the Grammy category is still named) of the 1990s, where it seemed a cottage industry.
So Much For The Afterglow is a masterpiece.
Pop-punk perfection full of stanzas about how things in your life, and the people you care about, are not OK.
“He knows if he ever even gets to try, He will bite down hard to make the monster cry”
“I was ten years old, doing all that I could, wasn’t easy to be a scared white boy in a black neighborhood”
“I hate people who love to say, money is the root of all that kills, they have never been poor they have never had the joy of a welfare christmas”
What’s even more ’90s is that all of those lyrics were PLAYED ON THE RADIO.
I’m not sure many other rock bands have talked so often, so directly, so successfully, about mental health issues as Everclear and I am very thankful to them for existing.
Metaphors and various vagueries are great in music, and often invoke great music. But sometimes, especially when you’re a confused, depression-suffering teenager, it’s good to have things spelled out in super direct, super catchy pop rock hooks.
“Everything to Everyone” hits home as people pleasing is a pastime of mine, the kind of pastime that, like baseball, you call a pastime because you’re not sure why you do it anymore.
Back To The Subject At Hand…
As a child, like 6 and under, I remember crying when my parents would leave me somewhere new: daycare, boy scouts, school
Depending on what article you read, there are different types of Insecure Attachment Styles, but most of them agree that crying when your parents leave is the style of Insecure Attachment that can be described as “anxious”
When this type of children become adults, they show a very strong need for closeness and affection. Their relationships with other people are very intense. They show dependence, a need for approval, and over-sensitivity to rejection.
When they establish a relationship, it’s hard for them to stop suspecting that something will go wrong. They focus too much on their relationship problems and not on any of the positive aspects. All of their relationships give them anxiety, which leads to escapist and avoidant behavior, such as substance use and self-harm.
Source
If those 2 paragraphs triggered you like they triggered me, probably talk to someone professionally, but also listen to So Much For The Afterglow. Though I would take some of the anti-medication lyrics (“Yeah you just take your pill/ and everything will be alright”) and the satirical big-pharma commercial (ahead of its time in ways it didn’t know) with a grain of salt, or perhaps, spoonful of sugar.
Not an excuse, but the 90s saw fears about about over-medication (see: the success of Prozac Nation) reach a fever pitch that was both a warranted criticism of not-well-enough-understood drugs being prescribed in record numbers, and an overblown, phobic-based attack on all medication prescribed for mental health.
Unlike the subject of scorn in “Everything To Everyone” I don’t know “all the right people” and I certainly haven’t been successful at playing “all the right games” but that hasn’t stopped me from trying “to be everything to everyone”.
“Jumper“
by Third Eye Blind
Key lyric: “I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend”
Mental health phenomenon addressed: suicide.
Third Eye Blind was formed in San Francisco in 1993.
In 1994 (“Jumper” was released in 1996) suicide was the 9th leading cause of death in America, and specifically, between 1990 and 1994, the “West region” had the highest crude suicide rate in America with 14.1 suicides for every 100,000 people.
inspired by a friend of band manager Eric Godtland who committed suicide in high school due to bullying he endured for his sexuality.[3]
Wikipedia, on the origin of “Jumper”
Not only that but the band grew up (as a band) in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge while it was on its way to becoming the most popular location to commit suicide, a grim title it would achieve by the time The Bridge (2006) filmed in 2004.
So with all of this in the background, Third Eye Blind comes along with more pop-acceptable form of grunge: lyrics that touched on the topics of the genre but whose music took none of the risks. I say that as a person for whom Third Eye Blind is one of the most important albums of their lives and one I didn’t stop listening to for the entirety of 8th grade.
“Dumb”
by Nirvana
Key lyric: “I think I’m dumb, maybe I’m just happy”
Mental illness symptom addressed: The trick depression plays on you where you can never allow yourself to fully enjoy your own happiness because you think you don’t deserve it because of original sin or something that happened before you started forming memories so you make up different ways to deny yourself joy to the point your reaction to happiness ranges from reminding yourself of the bad things about yourself as proof you don’t deserve the happiness your feeling, and immediate dread because you think something bad is going to happen next because nothing good could happen to you without the universe immediately balancing itself out because you don’t deserve good things because you aren’t a good enough person until one day you find yourself incapable of accepting a compliment about your shirt without responding with something like, “well, I got a great deal on it”, and by that point you’ve slipped into the habit of crediting luck with all the good things that happen to you, while still blaming yourself for all the bad things, causing you to dismiss your own achievements while dwelling on your failures, and eventually coming to the twisted conclusion that happy people are only happy because they’re too oblivious to all the bad shit in the world and inside themselves and even though you notice all that bad stuff and think about it all the time, and while this self-reflection would make you, by your own twisted logic, a good person, you still don’t deserve love.
You could say this one strikes a cord.
“Hurt”
by Nine Inch Nails
Mental health phenomena addressed: Self-harm.
Key lyric: “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel”
Self-harm, or as John Rzeznik from Goo Goo Dolls calls it, that thing you do where “you bleed just to know you’re alive”, “is a global health problem and is one of the strongest predictors of completed suicide” and “especially common in 15–24 year old women” according to a 2008 Australian study.
According to another metadata analysis “one hundred seventy-two datasets reporting self-harm in 597,548 participants from 41 countries were included”, the most frequent reason for self-harming, “was relief from thoughts or feelings”
“Hurt” and “Iris” both refer to the act of self-harm not as catharsis, but as a way to break through an impenetrable emotional numbness, when in reality, it appears most who self-harm are doing it because they, feel too much rather than too little.
Now, “Hurt” is also about addiction (“the needle tears a hole”) and “I hurt myself today” a metaphor that can apply to many different scenarios but song lyrics having multiple interpretations doesn’t diminish the validity or power of any one of those interpretations (nor does it validate them, but it does make for a fun semantic argument with oneself at midnight on a Monday).
“Lily (My One And Only)”
by Smashing Pumpkins
Key lyric: “I’m hanging in this tree, in the hopes that she will catch a glimpse of me”.
Mental health phenomena addressed: Stalking.
“Lily” is, lyrically, the pretty straight forward story of a guy sitting outside a ladies room in a tree watching her do stuff. A scene old-timey movies probably would portray as “romantic”.
But what “Lily” does so well is, musically, deliver us into the stalker’s untethered perspective.
The pretty melody is our stalker thinking he’s in love.
The swaying, saloon piano, the lullaby rhythm, the somber, playful percussion are the relationship as our peeping tom (what a nice way to say deranged horny stalker man) sees it, the lyrics tell a story he’s oblivious to.
The creepiest part, like Travis Bickle’s glance in the mirror at the end of Taxi Driver, is that as the police are “dragging me away” our stalker thinks his survivor is waving, fondly, goodbye to him “I swear I saw her raise hand and wave (goodbye)”.
In 1993, Australian stalking expert Paul Mullen, clinical director and chief psychiatrist at Victoria’s Forensicare, a high-security hospital for mentally ill offenders, analyzed the behavior of 145 diagnosed stalkers. Based on their analyses, Mullen and fellow colleagues proposed five stalker subtypes, in an attempt to facilitate diagnosis and treatment.
Psychology Today
Our narrator in “Lily” is definitely the Intimacy Seeker subtype of stalker, who, “identifies a person, often a complete stranger, as their true love and begins to behave as if they are in a relationship with that person”.
The kicker?
“Many intimacy seeking stalkers carry the delusion that their love is reciprocated”.
Raise her hand and wave, goodbye.
“Whatever (Folk Song in C)”
by Elliott Smith
Key lyric: “I haven’t done anything in a long long time, but whatever you got right now, will probably suit me fine”
Mental health phenomena addressed: Relapse
Released in 2007 but recorded between 1994-1997
“Under The Bridge” is undoubtedly the 90s addiction anthem.
But Smith’s “Whatever” is subtle the ways that relapsing can sometimes be: a calm, almost casual decision one feels immediate relief upon making, not dissimilar to the relief I used to feel when I decided I just wasn’t going to do the homework assignment that I had procrastinated for weeks on, that was due tomorrow, and which I hadn’t started.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not saying heroin withdrawals are like homework. I’m just saying homework is the heroin withdrawals of childhood.
Where “Under The Bridge” is bombastic, winding its way through the summer streets of Los Angeles, “Hanging Out With Me” is matter of fact with a childlike forthrightness. Smith’s description of a shooting den is near Seussian,
They come here alone, and they leave in twos-
Except for you and me, who just come to use
When he throws your own addiction back in your face (“if you’re all done like you said you’d be”) we’re almost ready to let him feel the self-hate he sings next (“what are you doing, hanging out with me?”) except that he does it with such beauty, we can’t help but forgive him.
“Round Here”
by Counting Crows
Key lyric: “through myself and back again”
Mental Illness addressed: dissociative disorder
According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of dissociative disorder include “a sense of being detached from yourself and your emotions” and “a blurred sense of identity” which is a common theme in Duritz’s lyrics.
There are several passages on the Counting Crows debut album that allude to this sense of un-reality, but I chose this couplet from the opening song, “Round Here”.
I walk in the air, between the rain,
Through myself and back again where? I
Don’t know
Duritz himself spoke to Men’s Health about an episode of his disorder that occurred in 2004.
This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job—in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it’s not real, as if things aren’t taking place. It’s hard to explain, but you feel untethered.
And because nothing seems real, it’s hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they’re not there. You’re not there. That’s why I rarely saw my family back then: It’s hard to care when everything feels as if it’s taking place in your imagination. And if you’re distant with people, especially women you’re romantically involved with, they eventually leave.
There are three major types of dissociative disorders. One of them, and I am not saying Adam Duritz has ever said he’s experienced this, is “dissociative identity disorder. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder is characterized by ‘switching’ to alternate identities”.
Duritz is great with metaphor, his lyrics often blurring the lines between reality and surreality, self and others. But he also speaks about identity, or sense of self, on August and Everything After in a very direct way if we take his lyrics literally.
From “Rain King”,
I belong, in the service of the queen
I belong, anywhere but in-between
From “Mr. Jones”,
I want to be Bob Dylan
From “Perfect Blue Buildings”,
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from myself and me
From “Anna Begins”.
I’m sure there’s something in a shade of gray
Or something in between
And I can always change my name
If that’s what you mean
“Down By The Water”
by PJ Harvey
Key lyric: “Come back here and give me my daughter”
Mental illness addressed: the dread of the disease returning.
Not actually about a missing daughter (the song is a rorschach test for loss of innocence), “Down By The Water” almost transcends description due to anyone’s ability to really know what PJ Harvey is talking about.
Through it’s vagueness “Down By The Water”, of all the songs on this list, best conveys the uneasiness that a mental illness imparts on its victim.
Speaking only to my own experience, even with mild depression there is the feeling at the onset of an episode, that you have no control over what is about to come (hopelessness a convenient side-effect of the disease). Feeling that light being pulled away, feeling yourself losing what you will come to look back on as a more innocent time: this song gives me that pit-of-my-stomach feeling.
There is no romanticism in “that blue-eyed girl, became blue-eyed whore” the way Harvey sings it, over a synth dirty enough to put you in the mud with it.
It is musically (backing vocals sung almost atonally), as well as lyrically, unsettling, giving the term earworm a sudden hits-too-close-to-home meaning.
I had to lose her
To do her harm
I heard her holler
I heard her moan
When Harvey gets to the whispering part, “little fish, big fish”, the song reaches its ultimate form and subsequently must end itself.
“Down By The Water” is what happened when 90s Alternative Music wrote a children’s song from the Victorian era, a ring around the rosey for human trafficking.
“Self Esteem”
by The Offspring
Key lyric: “I got no self-esteem”
Mental Health Issue addressed: low self-esteem.
If it hasn’t become apparent, 90s pop-rock was full of artists that were big into extolling their own fucked-upedness.
So big a top 10 hit on the Mainstream Rock charts was called “Self Esteem”, and it wasn’t about the good kind.
And that’s one of my favorite attributes of Gen-X: just fuck everything, especially rules, and fucking day jobs and, like, grammatical structures and why the fuck are we taking all this shit so seriously when we’re all just gonna die anyway? So, nihilism I suppose. But with a fun set of riffs.
“Self Esteem”, while claiming to be sung by a man with “no self esteem” is both self-flagellation and humble-bragadoccio: I can’t stop getting laid even though I hate myself!
And if a woman who is saying all she wants is you, but then you wonder why she goes and sleeps with your friends isn’t enough to lower your self-esteem this study drew the conclusion that “women’s moans and sighs are not an involuntary reaction to male sexual prowess, but a way of exerting influence over their partner’s sexual response”.
“Possum Kingdom”
by The Toadies
Key lyric: all of them.
Mental Illness Embodied: Serial Killer-ism, probably.
It’s hard to find one line that’s any more or less creepy than any other on “Possum Kingdom”
Similar to “Down By The Water”, The Toadies “Possum Kingdom” is too comfortable in its own skin. Dissimilar to the one fish, two fish song, “Possum Kingdom” is less ambiguous as to its intent.
The entire song is nothing less than the internal monologue of an obsessive killer as he vacillates from adulation and worship to murderous contempt towards a young woman he’s convinced (or convinced himself he isn’t forcing) to meet him “behind the boathouse”.
The song starts out with gruff demands “make up your mind, decide to walk with me” and doesn’t get better from there.
The random bursts of repetition (“forever….forever”, and “do you wanna die”) and scattered structure feel like a mind on the edge of breaking: there are so many hooks that almost any other line could be the chorus, disorienting us, just as the narrator wants.
From the sudden escalation in aggression (“be my angel” followed by, “do you want to die?”), to the narrator’s insistence that he will “treat you well”, (but only if Jesus helps), “Possum Kingdom” is either the diary of of Jason Vorhees, or it’s a commentary on how every man contains within him the darker impulses of America’s rigid, male heterosexuality. Either way it is successful at what it does and way catchier than it should be.