By Jess Santacroce
Writer/Editor: The 315
Sometimes things just don’t go well for working musicians and other artists. Gigs grow scarce, album or other project sales are down. It feels like you’re working for yourself in all the wrong ways, with nobody else even paying attention to anything you do. But since music helps with pretty much everything, the best way to get through those times just might include a “feeling unappreciated and ignored” playlist. Here are five songs to get you started. Add them all, then add five or six more, or start with one and find other songs with this theme from your favorite genre or decade.
Country: I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry: Hank Williams (1949)
No country music playlist about being unappreciated or unnoticed could exist without this song, a classic in every sense of the word. The title specifically refers to being “lonesome,” not “unappreciated” or “ignored,” but lyrics describing a whippoorwill as sounding “too blue to fly” and robins weeping “when leaves begin to die” teamed with the wailing vocals, paint a picture of lonesomeness that descended into despair a long time ago. This isn’t the loneliness of a person whose spouse is working yet another late shift this week or whose friends forgot that they like to go out too. It’s the loneliness of someone who has been completely abandoned.
Pop-punk: Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Green Day (2004)
Like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” this song laments the type of lack of appreciation that comes with isolation. People sometimes mistakenly think this song is called “I Walk Alone” because that is the phrase that is repeated in the chorus. The narrator in the song describes walking alone through life with only their shadow walking beside them, and hoping someone will find them, but knowing it isn’t likely to happen.
Alternative: Creep (clean version): Radiohead (1997)
Feeling unappreciated can certainly come from feeling abandoned and isolated, but it is possible to feel unappreciated and ignored even when you are right there with other people. The clean version of “Creep” describes such a situation. The narrator sings of being someplace with the person they want to notice and appreciate them, but asks themselves “what the hell am I doing here?” and concludes “I don’t belong here.”
“Creep” is often an anthem for people who feel like they don’t fit in, like people don’t want them wherever they are, and don’t appreciate much about them, even delving into the common pattern of rejected and ignored people, holding others up on pedestals. When you feel like a “weirdo” the person you wish would notice you seems to “float like a feather..”
Those who want a melancholy song about feeling like everyone around them is better than they are will want to stick to the clean version of “Creep.” There is an “explicit” or NSFW (or radio) version that replaces “very special” with “<f bomb> special.” This small change shifts the entire mood of the song from sad to angry.
R&B: The Little Things: Jessica Mauboy (2019)
The previous three songs rely on imagery from nature, feathers, birds, the moon, shadows, to craft a mental picture of isolation, loneliness, and low-self opinion, all offshoots of being unappreciated and ignored. Jessica Mauboy’s “The Little Things” narrates a story about a couple falling apart because one member no longer remembers and appreciates the little things in life. The song opens up with “You don’t say I’m pretty...not like you used to” and goes on to describe blowing up little things just to get her partner to notice them.
Metal/mixed genre: Faint: Linkin Park (2003)
Much of the time, being ignored generates feelings of sadness. We wonder what we did wrong, what there is about us that makes people simply start acting like we barely exist. As we can see from the previous songs on this list, isolation and trying harder to get the people ignoring us to pay attention to us are relatable responses.
Other times, being ignored makes us angry. This is the song for you if you’re going through one of those times. Searching for the genre of “Linkin Park” three times gets you seven different combinations of types of music. Some of their songs are indeed rap, some metal, and some pop, with elements of those and more in still others. “Faint” is one of their heavy metal songs, featuring a narrator telling the person ignoring them that they are going to listen to them “like it or not” and a chorus that includes the line “Don’t turn your back on me, I won’t be ignored.”
Making a themed playlist can spark ideas for songs to cover, inspire songwriters to write their own songs with similar themes, or just provide a distraction that allows you to calm down and begin focusing on the solution to things like lagging album sales or sparse performance attendance. And that’s before we even listen to the songs.
Photo credit: stock photo
Author’s note: Musicians/bands who would like a similar playlist made from their own catalog of songs for their website can order one by filling out the form on this website.
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