Yes

listening to sad songs makes you happier

Even if you're incredibly happy and walking on sunshine, put on a random song by Adele or Sam Smith and you'll instantly feel down. But that's exactly what you should do.

Just a moment of pause

Because it turns out that listening to sad songs makes us all happier. Especially if you're already feeling a bit sad, it's not a bad idea to update your playlist with some ballads, acoustic tunes, and whiny music from artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. ‘I miss you’, ‘It’s so hard’, ‘I can’t believe all the pain that I feel’, just to name a few. Sing along. You can. Because by allowing yourself a moment of sadness, you actually feel better. And you automatically get that moment when you listen to dramatic music. Dramatic as in sad, of course, because dramatic as in bad... I would never say something like that about good old Taylor.

Look. As humans, we deal with emotions every day. Well, usually we are happy as healthy people. But you can't cheer and jump and dance on golden clouds every day. Sometimes a day is just shit and misery. You might experience something rough at work, something impossible happens in your love life or that one friendship doesn't feel right anymore. It's part of life, no matter how silly that sounds.

But it's precisely through sad music that you can cope better with this. You have a moment when you are allowed to be sad when Adele wails that she will find someone like you. It releases something in you because you think: hey, this singer has also experienced hardship. You feel less alone and that's exactly what you need at such a rotten moment. But also in a happy moment, too. It helps both ways. According to science, listening to sad songs simply makes you happier faster. And do you feel like a silly crybaby when you let your tears flow freely? No need for that. Tears are actually called calming by psychologists. It's only good for you, every now and then.

Promise me that after that big cry you'll do something fun? You deserve it. And doesn't Adele also have some uptempo songs? Yes, right? If you cry from sadness, the first tear comes from your left eye. If you cry from joy, it comes from the right.

FACTS

• Women cry an average of 20 to 50 times a year. Men only 5 to 20 times a year.
• A woman's crying session lasts an average of 6 minutes (men's tears last only 2 minutes).
• Even if you're incredibly happy and walking on sunshine, put on a random song by Adele or Sam Smith and you'll instantly feel down...