Hello World, Here's a Song That We're Singing! C'mon Get Happy!

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? -- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Kurt Cobain once sang "I miss the comfort in being sad," and without going into too much detail (this is after all, a blog about music, not a makeshift confessional/therapist's couch), I have been going through some minor inner conflicts, been feeling some minor pangs of ennui (does ennui even come in minor pang form?) and I've noticed lately that I can't seem to get enough of bands like Keane and Radiohead and Muse. It may have even gotten to the point where others say "Hey that Jeff Buckley guy, he wasn't exactly the most up person out there, was he?" and I don't even notice. Someone on a website I frequent recently recommended Editors to me, and I like them, even though I think someone's observation that they are quite like Joy Division is spot on.

And I'm not even looking at this as part of that lame ass argument for parental warning stickers where parents without a clue think that listening to Korn or Marilyn Manson makes their children into homicidal killers. I just think I am listening to too much music that is cut from the same emotional (but not EMO) cloth, and I'm wondering if I abandoned my beloved music for a few weeks, what would happen? Instead of listening to a man pine for the father he never knew and listening to another complain about getting old when he isn't even 30, why don't I see what happens to my psyche if in their place I listen to Fergie and Pussycat Dolls and Gwen Stefani? Would whatever is affecting me, those problems, would they become different? Would it be the end of the world for me over something more trivial, as in "My local drugstore doesn't sell blue eyeliner!"? Would I end up going completely bat-shit mental?

I know I go through phases of music, where sometimes I like music that sounds completely ethereal and almost fragile, and then I turn around and want to hear someone screaming over crunching guitars and bashing drums. But I have to wonder now if it really is the music that I am listening to that is making me feel meh.

Any lurkers out there know of any intelligent feel good music? Or am I completely missing the point? If everyone felt safe in their own skin and had plenty of money and a lovely person to come home to, etc, etc, would there even be pop music in the first place?