ReCOWmendations: March 2024

Anxiety Songs

After writing (and rewriting) about mental illness in several recent posts, I began to wonder, what great songs in the rock-o-sphere effectively explore anxiety?

We music lovers are well aware of the power of song to help us navigate the often treacherous roads of life. For me, it’s truly been a lifesaver. My mood improved tenfold while researching and compiling this playlist.

There are tons of tunes about depression, suicide, nervous breakdowns, and other mental struggles. I am thinking of at least a half dozen as I type this. However, songs about anxiety are less commonplace.

This relative omission has helped me narrow this ReCOWmendations list to a tidy 5.

At the end of the post, though, you will find a playlist of 30 tunes about mental struggle. Many of them you will know; a few hopefully will be new to you.

I’d love to hear what songs about anxiety I’ve left out. Leave your thoughts and picks in the comments, and I’ll add them to the playlist.

Okay, without further ado….

I'm picking up the telephone, there's no one I can call
I need somebody fast, can't find no sleep at all
I wish I could relax, I just can't stop my mind
I wish I could collapse but my body's not that kind

The legendary Pat Benatar began her career with four straight brilliant albums. The fourth, Get Nervous, was less critically and commercially received than the previous three (In the Heat of the Night, Crimes of Passion, Precious Time), but it’s equally worthy, in my opinion.

The video for “Anxiety” is fun and campy, but the song on its own takes the subject matter seriously. This was one of the first tunes I remember directly addressing anxiety. It’s also catchy as hell, and Neil Giraldo’s guitar solo is fire.

Always biting on my nails
Always stiff, it never fails
Now I think I'll pick my nose
Wipe it on my sweaty clothes
Anxiety, anxiety
Keeps me happy
Anxiety, anxiety
Keeps me happy

I’ve always enjoyed this late-era Ramones track, though I’d only read the lyrics now. They’re quite juvenile—mondo bizarro perhaps—and make Pat Benatar seem like Shakespeare in comparison. Sonically, it’s a banger, though—a headbanger!

I can honestly say that I’ve had anxiety for decades and never felt the urge to pick my nose and wipe it on my sweaty clothes. But, hey, it can affect us all differently.

Anxiety
How do you always get the best of me?
I'm out here living in a fantasy
I can't enjoy a goddamn thing
Anxiety
Why am I never where I am supposed to be?
Even with my lover sleeping close to me
I'm wide awake and I'm in pain

We can always count on the brilliant Jason Isbell to express the most challenging aspects of life with a poetic directness that cuts straight to the heart. Listening to Jason and the 400 Unit on “Anxiety,” I can’t help but feel my eyes tear up and my gut ache. This song is 7 minutes of raw, emotional epicness.

I've got anxiety
It has got the best of me
Satisfaction guaranteed
Anxiety

Lyrically, IDLES take on “Anxiety” doesn’t say anything profound or wise, but the song rocks so hard I have no choice but to flail my body around whenever and wherever I am listening to it. Which is a bit of a problem when I’m in line at the supermarket.

The final minute of the song features layers of screeching guitars, frenetic bass, and overlapping vocals crying out “Anxiety!” over and over, which to my ears is pure catharsis.

I'm spinning in a vacuum
Deteriorating to great acclaim
Help has fallen by the wayside
Nowhere near to finding better ways to be
I'm not here purely for the sake
Of breathing, I am wide awake
Excuse my efforts for today

All-encompassing
Anxiety

From Wikipedia:

Preoccupations is a Canadian post-punk band from Calgary, Alberta, formed in 2012 under the name Viet Cong. The band consists of Matt Flegel (vocals, bass), Scott Munro (guitar, synth), Daniel Christiansen (guitar) and Mike Wallace (drums). Flegel and Wallace had previously been members of the band Women, which broke up in 2010. The group's musical style has been described as "labyrinthine post-punk".^[1]

I include this info because, although I had heard of the band Preoccupations, I didn’t know much at all about them. Listening to their take on “Anxiety,” I am reminded of the thrillingly nervous feeling in my body when I heard Joy Division for the first time in the 1980s.

It doesn’t appear until almost a minute and a half into the song, but Matt Flegel’s deep, Ian Curtis-like vocal delivery is captivatingly eerie. The way his voice falls out of key at the end of his elongated “anxiety…” grabs me and then shakes me.

This song was new to me until researching this piece, and now I’m completely preoccupied with it.

Which anxiety songs would you add to this list?

The playlist below includes more than just anxiety songs. I top-loaded it with anxiety tunes, but I see it as an ever-growing repository for songs about mental illnesses of all types, including ones expressed in terms no longer used today, like nervous breakdown.

CLICK HERE FOR SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

(Because it’s an ever-changing, growing list, I am not embedding it — click above and save to get all the updates).

Thanks for reading! - Steve