Pandemic Playlist: Sad Girls Dance Too

Mitski, by Bao Ngo

This week’s Pandemic Playlist is for those unafraid to dance with tears in their eyes.

I have always been a fan of dancing my way through sadness. There’s catharsis in crying, sure, but there’s even more in crying while dancing. It’s a complete expulsion. This week’s playlist brings you both. 

In early April, Johnny Jewel of Chromatics and Glass Candy released a remix of Angel Olsen’s song “All Mirrors.” “All Mirrors” is the title track on Olsen’s incredibly sad, inward-facing 2019 album, and the song depicts the dizziness of reflecting ourselves back to each other constantly, with slow and winding instrumentals underneath the lyrics. The remix reimagines this song as a dance track, one where the lyrics still hold the same weight as before, but the music beneath transforms the song’s purpose. This song was the inspiration for the playlist, and I set out to find my favorite sad girl bops. 

This playlist is meant to be shuffled, as I think playlists built explicitly for dancing require a level of spontaneity. The playlist is mostly women, but all capture what I believe to be a sad girl energy. The sadness is across the board, whether it be loneliness, breakups, aging, or a general malaise to life itself. 

I started by combing through my favorite current indie sad girls, seeking their most danceable tracks. Some of the tracks I included here were Courtney Barnett’s “Pedestrian at Best,” Lucy Dacus’ cover of “Dancing in the Dark,” and Phoebe Bridgers’ recent single “Kyoto.” The most obvious choice, however, was Mitski’s “Nobody.” The song opens, “My god, I’m so lonely / So I open the window / To hear sounds of people,” which strikes a particularly raw chord right now. It’s a song about wanting to feel alright in small reprieves, in the comfort of someone else, despite recognizing all the ways we know nobody’s coming to save us. The chorus is Mitski singing the word “Nobody” over and over while a dance beat catapults listeners into a seeming delirium where we dance to our own loneliness. 

I wanted some classics, as well. I included Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” No Doubt’s “Just A Girl,” and Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland, 1945.” Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” also makes an appearance, a song I wouldn’t normally categorize as overwhelmingly sad, but right now, I very much do. My favorite of the older songs is Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend.” This is, in my opinion, a perfect song. It’s a love song and a break-up song in one, nuanced in a way that’s rare within the structure of a pop song. In it, she talks a new lover through a break-up with their current partner, but it’s filled with empathy for all involved. There’s no spite, only a sadness for how the situation is unfolding, and a hope to move through it with as much grace as possible. All of this happens over upbeat synths that are nearly impossible not to dance to, pushing the song’s dimensionality further. 

These are the songs that have been getting me moving and getting my endorphins flowing without feeling like I’m turning too much of a blind eye to my sadness. I hope you can dance away some sadness, as well.