I have been aware of them for as long as I can remember.
Listening to Katrina and the Waves “Walking on Sunshine.” Seems the singer is waiting every day for a person to send a letter that he’s coming to stay. Sounds delusional to me.
Crazy Dan - Scratch Acid
Until Lately - Dream Syndicate
*How Sweet To Be An Idiot *- Niel Innes
(in title only) Mama We’re All Crazy Now - Slade
Praire Wind - Niel Young
Uncle Salty - Aerosmith
Tom Paxton’s Crazy John about John Lennon. Crazy and prophetic:
Crazy John, why you wanna go back again?
Crazy John, talking with the desperate men?
You have to be crazy, John, for taking those chances,
When you could be lazy, John, just playing for dances.
When you wade in the water, the people can’t see the old reflections.
When you stand in the road, the people can’t read the old directions.
When the people get lost, they start building a cross.
Crazy John, I want to be crazy too.
No mention of Billy Joel’s You May Be Right?
No “maybe” about it.
Go Crazy-The Teardrop Explodes
Christine-Siouxsie & the Banshees [based on a real case history of a woman afflicted by Dissociate Identity Disorder]
Madman Across the Water-Elton John
Like The Weather by 10,000 Maniacs is about dealing with depression, despite the upbeat music
None of those will hold a strangeness candle to his disturbing “Jugband Blues”
The Offspring’s “Gotta Get Away” would qualify: “I’m paranoid of people and it’s starting to show” … “There’s demons in my head and it’s more than I can take” … “I think I’m being followed, I look around / It’s only my shadow creepin’ on the ground.”
Colin Hay’s “Overkill” is about anxiety.
Judges? A ruling, please?:
Down With The Sickness - Disturbed
(Not the Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine cover; that one’s fun!)
Eminem & Rihanna’s The Monster specifically references his ACD.
Alice in Chains “Down in the Hole”
Most of the Counting Crows library is, in no small part, about lead singer Adam Duritz and his battle with a dissociative mental health disorder.
He discusses it here:
Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days is the tale of a guy living in the past and drinking too much to deal with the problem head on.
Boomtown Rats ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’?
I submit, for your consideration, “LITHIUM”, by Evanescence:
Like The Weather by 10,000 Maniacs is about dealing with depression, despite the upbeat music
With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
A quiver in my voice as if I might cry
What a cold and a rainy day
Where on earth is the sun hid away.
Laura Nyro seems to have suffered from depression, as best expressed in these lyrics…
Going down to Stoney End, I never wanted to go down to Stoney End
Mama, let me start all over, cradle, oh mama, cradle me again
Another Billy Joel on: Big Shot. Both the singer and the subject have their problems.