I've tried repeatedly to compose songs in Major rather than minor, as I usually do, but I keep ending up with a fucking Pachelbel's Canon chord progression :| It just sucks you in like a whirlpool you have to constantly swim away from.
Nick Hornby wrote about the essentially sad nature of pop music in his novel "High Fidelity" (1995):<p>"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?"<p>The movie was good, the book is amazing.<p>Teenage tragedy songs from the 50s or 60s are quite depressing (though the scenarios are pretty maudlin): <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_tragedy_song" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_tragedy_song</a>