I’m thinking Xiu Xiu’s “A Promise” album, but that to me sounds maybe more like the soundtrack of a mental breakdown rather than a soundtrack to a mental breakdown. Here’s a sample of Sad Pony Guerilla Girl. Sparse. Creepy. Very nervous, wavering sounding vocals. And a glitchy electro-noise part that starts at around 2:02. First time I heard the album, I felt like I was going nuts myself. It’s still an album I have to be in a very, very particular mood to want to listen to.
I would have gone with Queen’s I’m Going Slightly Mad. Cool video.
Someone to Pull the Trigger - Matthew Sweet
Despite being a damned catchy song (with a great video), Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats’ “S.O.B” is about drinking your life away after a breakup.
Take This Bottle - Faith No More
I think “Music that will make you crazy if you’re sane” is very different from “Crazy music”. The songs where someone says they’re going crazy are usually very sane. The ones that will drive you crazy are scary. The songs that are “gone and never coming back” (like you might actually hear a long-term mental patient singing) are sometimes disturbing, sometimes surprisingly tame.
Talking Heads - Memories Can’t Wait
Pink Floyd - Careful with that Axe Eugene
Funkadelic -* Maggotbrain*
Maybe not a total breakdown, but definitely depression: Black Sabbath’s “Paranoia” is practically my theme song:
Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn’t help me with my mind
People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I’ll lose my mind if I don’t find something to pacify
Can you help me, occupy my brain?
Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can’t find
I can’t see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it’s too late
The craziest music I know is from the boy at the end of Berg’s Wozzeck - “Hopp hopp, hopp hopp”. But you have to know what happened before that, for it to be crazy.
These days I mostly listen to goregrind, brutal death metal and slam; I could name dozens and dozens of songs that would fit these descriptors.
ETA: Here’s one: Nails - Scapegoat.
Rockwell - Somebody’s Watching Me
Lindsay Buckingham - Go Insane
Geto Boys - My Minds Playin Tricks on Me
Prince - Strange Relationship
Prince - Starfish and Coffee
DMX - Party Up (Up in Here)
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
For what I would call “existential dread and despair” I suggest the soundtrack album(s) for “The Thing.” (1982)
Lyrics? I don’t need lyrics. I have enough voices in my head for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and they’re all saying something different.
Nope, all I need is a backing track, and Free Form Guitar by Chicago fits nicely. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to listen to that song and not have a nervous breakdown, even when you’re perfectly sane.
Mad World - Gary Jules
“I Don’t Like Mondayss”-Boomtown Rats
“Crazy”-Patsy Cline (or Willie Nelson, if you prefer)
Royal Tennenbaums used professional sad sack Elliot Smith to great effect (spoilers I guess). Dress Rehersal Rag could work here, too.
I don’t encounter many people who have heard of Xiu Xiu. Really most of their albums are pretty dire. “Dear God, I Hate Myself” is maybe the most on-point, the title track covers depression more realistically than most “depression songs” do.
Dory Previn wrote a series of songs as part of her therapy after having a mental breakdown. She recorded them in an album called On My Way to Where. Here are some of the tracks:
With My Daddy in the Attic - Previn’s father was also mentally ill, and he once locked the family in the house and shut himself in the attic. The song also seems to be about incest, although she doesn’t say so explicitly. Woody Allen once claimed that Mia Farrow got the idea for her accusation against him from this song.
Twenty Mile Zone - Previn was once pulled over by a cop when she was practicing primal scream therapy while she was driving.
Esther’s First Communion - This describes the onset of Previn’s hallucinations.
Mr, Whisper - This is about the voices in Previn’s head, and the breakdown on board an airliner that led to her hospitalization.
Am I Going Insane - Black Sabbath
Crazy (A Suitable Case For Treatment) - Nazareth
Hearing Voices - Suicidal Tendencies
Toys in the Attic - Aerosmith
I’m Going Slightly Mad - Queen
Descent into Madness - Flying Lotus
The Quiet Room - Alice Cooper (needs to go at the end of the playlist, I think)
That reminds me of “Sniper” by Harry Chapin. After a lifetime of neglect, impotent anger, and unrequited love, the narrator climbs the clock tower in the middle of town and begins shooting people to prove that he exists. Obviously inspired by the University of Texas mass shooting perpetrated by Charles Whitman, the song uses a lot of jarring music and vocals. It incorporates a pretty good extended metaphor, comparing the shooting and ensuing gun battle to a conversation.
Kinky Friedman. Or ICP if that’s your speed.