THE EXPRESSION OF SADNESS IN SONG LYRICS

Abstract

The experience of losing a loved one in live is a universal phenomenon that gives pain to every person. This kind of loss called is sadness. Sadness which is also known as sorrows, is a term used to describe painful emotion that is experienced when someone or something a person cares about either death or loss. The sadness caused by loss of the loved one gives the emotional pain that every person has to cope with. Sadness as a subject has become a lot of attention in history of popular music. Artists (authors) prefer to express their sorrows through works one of which is sad song lyric. Napier and Shamir (2018) in their academic journal at Lawrence Technological University argued that sadness increased in popular music lyric.They emphasized that the survey did not indicate that music had changed, but the public-tasted musical change as the study covered the most popular song in each year. Around 2014 Ed Sheeran and some male artist such as Sam Smith and Bleachers revived the popularity of pop male song star, in mid of blissful trend they are united by their embrace of the melancholy. This male singer often used depiction of sadness and melancholy in their work. This research studied seven songs of male singers entitled Someone you loved, When I was your man, Jealous, Bad, I am not the only one, Talking to the moon, and Stay with me. The research found a highlight issue about the sadness in the songs that contain love relationship described in lyrics. Most of the lyrics tell the story of someone who faces the loss of his lover. The sadness phenomena in song lyrics of male is interesting topic to be discussed. Sadness that are involved in song lyrics are real life events theme that touch the heart of every living person. Sadness songs sung by male singers are more popular and stir more emotion than songs sung by women. The way the singers poure their feeling honestly into a lyrics explain the deep state. They can translate their emotions into beautiful lyrics. The lyrics are written in meaningful simple dictions. A study of a similar topic has been made by Alfonsa Maria Theoterra Yoshanti (2010) at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. In her thesis she investigated the expression and experience of sadness toward Didi Kempot Song lyrics. The data were collected from Didi Kempot popular album which contained sadness theme.The result showed the experience of sadness in Didi Kempot song was doe to losing someone he loved. The expression of sadness is shown by facial expression, body language and posture. However Yoshanti mentions that she has a limited access to relevant literature because of not many authors who discuss sadness in song lyrics. Tomi Chandra (2015) a student from Bung Hatta University also discussed similar topic in his thesis writing. The object of the research is The Best of Me a movie (2014). His research aims to describe how the words literally and non-literally used to express the emotions of love and sadness. Chandra (2015) provided description of relevant literature to distinguish emotion in language such the way of using the words to convey the emotions. The result of study was that he determined non literal words dominantly used by the actors in the movie to express the emotion