Top 5 Songs to Kill Yourself To

Well, my old mistress is in town again. I thought I shook her long ago but she tracked me down, found my new address. I've been thinking about killing myself now more often than I have since I was probably 18, and that's unfortunate.

This article may sound glib, even comedic. I assure you, that is not the intention, nor the spirit with which this is delivered. It may sound like I take the subject too lightly, but it's a haunt that's been following me for decades and I've long since lost the squeamishness that might afflict the lesser acquainted. And music, music is one of the greatest tools in this fight. It makes us feel intimately understood at a stage when we could hardly feel any less connected to people.

It goes without saying that the song you choose to kill yourself to is one of the most personal choices you'll ever make, and it's going to be wildly subjective. These aren't my picks for everyone, these are simply my picks.


#5 Nobody Home
by Pink Floyd



Most of us who don't want to live probably know what it's like to be living in this kind of apathetic squalor. The plodding pace and malaised, petering delivery of the tune makes it sound as though the singer of this song has already taken the sleeping pills and may drift into the final sleep at any moment, so you'll feel right at home making this your final track.

And if you're a truly disturbed person, there's an extra dark irony in the fact that once you're dead, you'll be reversing the song and people will be calling you, but getting no answer.

(Pro-Tip: If you care about your family, you'll box up all of your worldly possessions before you end your life, so that they don't have to spend months going through your old things and, in doing so, facing their loss a hundred extra times. Boxing up your things will also give you time to think over your decision and decide whether you truly want to die, or if you just needed time to heal. Also, schedule some sort of social media post to appear after you're dead so that your body doesn't decompose before it's found, that's an important issue of courtesy.)


#4 The Outside
by Taylor Swift



Seeing Taylor Swift in this discussion may surprise you, and this isn't even in the top 10 saddest Taylor songs -- if all you listen to is the instrumentation. The Outside sounds like a cheery, resiliant song. But like Led Zeppelin's Celebration Day (a song that's actually about the holocaust) the tone betrays a set of lyrics that are genuinely sinister. The Outside is full of the lamentations of someone who is not merely discouraged, but who appears to have decided to kill herself. And on a personal level, it happens to coincide with my greatest failings in life, namely my inability to form meaningful relationships.

First Taylor disavows her struggle against the tide of an uncaring and conformist society and acknowledges the fact that her ambitions in life have conclusively failed. "I didn't know what I would find when I went looking for a reason." "I tried to take the road less traveled by, but nothing seems to work ..."

And then she laments on the fact that she never really even had a chance, because her attempts to reach out were met with indifference. "How can I ever try to be better if nobody ever lets me in?" "You saw me there, but you never knew I would give it all up to be a part of this, a part of you."

Finally, she confirms her intentions to kill herslf, with the unequivocable decleration that "it's all too late so you see, you could've helped if you had wanted to but no one notices until it's too late to do anything." She's basically saying "Don't cry for me, I'm already dead."


#3 Campaigner
by Neil Young



There's nothing inherently suicidal about this song. But it does describe the sort of quivering failure that has marked my life, the complete inability to progress even to the most basic level of human functionality in a world where even a hateful curmudgeon like Richard Nixon rose to the level of President. You might think "Hey, if Nixon can do it, that gives hope to all us curmudgeons, right?" But, no, the rise of Nixon proves that there's a game being played, one that is so woefully and universally indecipherable to me that by the time I've made the first step, everyone else has crossed the finish line. Campaigner has that kind of bittersweet mentality where I could spend my last moments wistfully thinking "There may have been something, somewhere for me in this world, but if it had ever been within my ability to unearth it, I had already missed that chance before I even knew it was there."


#2 When I Die
by GG Allin



Whether he's a tortured genius, the lowest possible version of gimmicky shock rock, or just a midlevel, unremarkable punk rocker, that's for you to decide. But no matter your assessment, it's hard to deny the truth in this bare bones acoustic ballad as GG recounts his life of debauchery without any illusions of self-worth or decency. In a way, the song is proof that even the hardest among us yearn for warmth. And it's a sentiment that rings true for so many of us who think of suicide, the wish that we could convince people not to mourn our deaths, just by saying so.


#1 Serpentine
by Ani Difranco



Ani is the undisputed Queen of writing eloquent songs about depression. But this isn't her most depressed song. It's worse: it's her most hopeless one. As a political progressive and a perennial shadowboxer, even in her darkest moments Ani grasps for the dawn, and doubles down on her will to fight. In one of her most depressed tunes (Bodily), she fights back against the gloom by appreciating even the most simple things -- like "the deep mahogany sheen of a roach!" That is some serious dedication to looking on the bright side. But in Serpentine, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the new age of American interventionism, Ani throws her hands up and gives in. She walls herself in her room alone and refuses to answer the phone. The serpentine thread of broken systems and uncaring voids that this 10 minute song doles out is second to none. Everything has become corrupted, and there doesn't seem to be a way out. If Ani, the strongest among us, can't push ahead, what hope is there left for me? 

The wall of fatigue seeps even into the recording of the song itself, where the characteristically meticulous Ani leaves this complex epic less polished than her usual soundscape perfection. I'd be honored to have this biting, glorious dirge as the last thing I hear.

"And the difference between you and me, baby, is I get fucked up when I'm alone."