DJ Jim Q's Playlist: PAIN

As I write this post, it’s a cold, dark and dreary fall day here in the suburbs of Washington DC. The bleakness is only reinforced by this month’s playlist, replete with songs of longing, heartache and suffering. The final theme of the year is Pain. Somber and heavy, the theme was selected by our Ukrainian friends from the Lviv chapter. Music is a receptive outlet for trauma, suffering and grief. Countless songs about heartache, unrequited love, and painful estrangement have been written over the decades. So many, that I could have easily filled the whole playlist with songs about broken hearts. The interesting question is why is our pain such a potent creative conduit? I suppose the optimal response to damage is creation, maybe that’s why suffering inspires such compelling music. Pain is a signal for attention from a deeper trauma. Whether physical or psychological, pain intensifies our senses and can have a concentrating, even heightening, effect on us. Creative endeavors such as music seem to help some artists work through psychological suffering. Channeling hurt and pain into creative expression is cathartic and even therapeutic. However, it must be said that treating the pain is not the same as addressing the underlying damage.

In pulling together the Pain playlist, I can see that some of my favorite songs tend to lean towards the melancholic. I opened the playlist with Dinosaur Jr. “Feel the Pain”. This is such a great song, everything seems on the verge, down to the uneven meter, the shaky vocals and untamed guitar riffs. I always found the leading lyric so disarmingly simple and poignant, “I feel the pain of everyone, then I feel nothing”. I can relate. As an empathetic cynic, it’s often hard to find a healthy balance. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s anti-love ballad “Modern Romance” is one of my all time favorite songs. Drenched in sadness and resignation, the dirge plods sluggishly forward with Karen O’s delicate voice floating just above, her vocals are so soft and present they sound like they’re being sung right into your ear. As touching as it is haunting, this one always gets me. One of the more emotive songs recorded in the past 20 years is Johnny Cash’s version of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt”. The song, already heart-wrenching in its original form, is exponentially more moving sung through the weathered voice of the 71-year-old legend near the end of his life. Trent Razor (of NIN), initially skeptical of the idea of the cover, after hearing the song and seeing the accompanying video confessed, “…that song isn’t mine any more”. Speaking of Trent and NIN, I ended the playlist with “Something I Can Never Have”. This seems like the most vulnerable song on that first NIN record, it’s slow repetitive minimal composition and steadily intensifying vocal performance make it feel very raw and unfiltered. It has always been one of my favorite Reznor compositions. He revisited the composition on his 2002 record Still. That version is even darker and minimal, arguably more emotive.

Watch out that you don’t hurt yourself, this month’s theme is Pain. Commiserate with these songs of suffering and aching. The Screaming Females recount the horrors of hospitalization with “Broken Neck”, P.J. Harvey turns up the intensity in her song of aching attachment in “Rid of Me”, and Ms. Lauryn Hill sings a song of painful longing and loss “When it Hurts So Bad”. Listen as long as you can tolerate, as they say no pain no gain or something like that.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy this playlist. If you do, give me a shout on Twitter or Threads, and be sure to follow and like on Spotify. See you next month.