Don’t try suicide, you’re just gonna hate it: 25 (mostly crappy) songs that try to talk you off the ledge
1. Third Eye Blind, “Jumper”
The old saying goes, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” There’s no good answer, but it’s pretty true that he does. The anti-suicide angels have been mostly left with ridiculously unsubtle songs like Third Eye Blind’s “Jumper,” whose chorus—“I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend”—doesn’t even sound all that convincing. In fact, the whole song seems to make the singer more important than the potential victim. The only positive to remaining in this life is that the singer essentially promises that he’ll leave you alone forever if you decide not to jump.
2. Queen, “Don’t Try Suicide”
Queen’s 1980 album The Game was the band’s big smash transition from rock to pop, and Freddie Mercury was apparently in such a good mood that he included this ludicrous, handclapping honky-funk message-song right next to classics like “Another One Bites The Dust” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Whooping out lyrics about prick-teases who get on his tits, Mercury recites the lines “Don’t try suicide / you’re just gonna hate it” as if he’s Rip Taylor urging someone not to order the veal. If this ridiculous number saved anyone from self-murder, it was because they couldn’t leave the planet without figuring out what Mercury was on when he wrote this, and trying it themselves.
3. Billy Joel, “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)”
In all probability, the last thing deeply depressed people wants to hear is Billy Joel telling them to cheer up, accompanied by über-cheesy ’80s synths. And the last thing they likely want to see is Joel giving a ghostly tour of how great life is—à la It’s A Wonderful Life—in an accompanying video. But Joel’s God complex was apparently in full swing in 1985, when he released this jaunty number aimed at fixing all of your problems. The solution? “Wait in that corner until that breeze blows in.” Well, duh!
4. AFI, “Narrative Of Soul Against Soul”
AFI was making big, largely positive changes to its sound when Black Sails In The Sunset dropped in 1999, but you wouldn’t know it from this goofy hardcore chanter. The only difference between this and a million other latter-day punk anthems is its pretentious title and its well-meaning but flatulent lyrics, which veer between high-minded nonsense and recycled clichés like “a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” The big finish: “I’d throw away everything to live.”
5. Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up”
Peter Gabriel’s much-covered 1986 chart-fixture “Don’t Give Up” tells an entire story about a broken-down man moving from place to place looking for work, and finally returning home to find it changed and devastated. Kate Bush answers each new setback with a whispery, sweet chorus, offering him affirmation: “Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet / don’t give up, I know you can make it good… Rest your head, you worry too much / It’s gonna to be all right.” While the two of them seem to be singing to each other more than to any imagined audience, it’s clearly an open message to the masses, with Bush sounding exactly like the little metaphorical angel sitting on listeners’ shoulders, trying to drown out the little devil on the other shoulder with little messages of hope like “You’re not the only one” and “No reason to be ashamed.”
6. Good Charlotte, “Hold On”
Joel and Benji Madden’s rocky upbringing is no big secret; as the co-leaders of Good Charlotte, the twin brothers have mined that childhood hardship in many songs. But they took their angst to a less navel-gazing level with 2002’s “Hold On.” Bearing a PSA-style video complete with testimonials from those who have lost loved ones to suicide, the group plainly, openly begs anyone contemplating taking their own life to reconsider: “Hold on if you feel like letting go / hold on, it gets better than you know.” That isn’t the most eloquent statement ever made on the subject, but its heart (and hook) is undeniably in the right place—especially considering that the Maddens have no shortage of depressed teenage fans. The band explored suicide again in its 2004 song “S.O.S.,” but “Hold On” remains that most unique of creatures: a Good Charlotte song that’s kind of hard to hate.
7. Guster, “Hang On”
A similar sentiment emerges in Guster’s laid-back “Hang On,” which—like many anti-despair songs—isn’t so much about putting down the pills and razor blades in moments of extreme emotion as about enduring ongoing depression and clinging to life through night after long, lonely night, while waiting for things to get better. The lyrics don’t even offer any solid reasons to endure; apparently there’s a dawn after the twilight, but apart from that, the song just explains that things suck—“Stuck without a captain or a chart / No one seems to know just who to follow anymore”—but urges listeners to hang on anyway, over and over and over. It sets out to be a fuzzy security blanket in song form, but it’s more like a hypnotic mantra: just hang on, just hang on, just hang on.
8. Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
There’s nothing wrong with the basic message of Bobby McFerrin’s signature song: Lightening up every once in a while is good for the soul. But “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”’s laid-back breeziness manages to wear out its welcome after a minute or so, and the song’s ubiquitous radio presence in the late ’80s turned it from charming pick-me-up to maddening earworm nearly overnight. No depressed person wants to get told to suck it up and smile; “Don’t Worry”’s sap-happy lyrics (“The landlord say your rent is late / he may have to litigate / don’t worry, be happy”) and whistle-ready tune don’t lift bad moods so much as confirm them, like an annoying friend who won’t stop forwarding pictures of kittens and bubble baths. Holding on to your crummy mood becomes a matter of self-defense. It’s unlikely that anyone would kill themselves after listening to “Don’t Worry,” though, if only because it’s really hard to change the radio station when you’re dead. Quoth Public Enemy: “’Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ was a number-one jam / damn, if I say it you can slap me right here.”
9. My Morning Jacket, “Death Is The Easy Way”
Those getting up the nerve to end it all should make sure they stay until the end of My Morning Jacket’s “Death Is The Easy Way,” as most of the lyrics seem hopelessly defeatist (“some say death is the easy way, and I think they’re right”). “Trying gets nothing done,” Jim James sings, only increasing the futile frustration. “Nothing gets you high,” he continues, dwelling on the constant lows of depression. “Alcohol, it only makes you tired”—just in case you were looking for temporary respite in a bottle. But just before you punch your own timecard, the song suggests the simple remedy of spending time with others (“but seeing you feels good”). In other words, go see a friend and turn that frown upside down.