I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost

Hear the voice of Teddy Thompson, who speaks with both humor and tenderness: “I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.” In these words is a paradox that has endured for ages: that sorrow can be sung with laughter, that despair can be softened with irony, and that the most sad songs are sometimes those that leave us smiling through tears.

The English spirit, shaped by centuries of rain, restraint, and irony, has long found comfort in this kind of music. To be self-deprecating is to disarm suffering by mocking it gently, to reduce the weight of grief by turning it into something almost humorous. It is a cultural shield and a cultural gift: the ability to look at the heaviest sorrows not with bitterness but with a wry smile. Thompson’s love for such songs reveals this heritage—a recognition that to laugh at pain is not to deny it, but to survive it.

The ancients also knew this balance. The poets of old would sing laments for fallen heroes, but often their verses carried irony and wit, reminding listeners that even tragedy could contain strange beauty. In the plays of Aristophanes, comedy and sorrow mingled together, showing that the line between laughter and grief is thin. For the human heart cannot bear sorrow without relief, nor laughter without depth. The maudlin song, half tragic and half comic, is the perfect vessel for this truth.

History, too, gives us examples. Consider the songs of the Irish during times of famine and exile—melodies filled with longing and pain, yet often adorned with humor and irony. The people sang not only to mourn, but to endure, to remind themselves that laughter and tears could coexist. In the same way, the English tradition of ballads and pub songs often mixed misery with wit, sorrow with sly laughter. Such songs were not mere entertainment; they were medicine for the spirit.

From this emerges a powerful lesson: pain does not always need to be solemn. Sometimes, it is best faced with irony, humility, and laughter. The self-deprecating song teaches us that to laugh at ourselves in the midst of suffering is to rob sorrow of its power. The humor does not erase the pain, but it makes it bearable, and in making it bearable, it gives us strength to continue. This is why such songs “make sense” to Thompson, and why they endure across generations.

The practical wisdom here is simple but profound: when you face hardship, allow yourself the freedom to find humor within it. Do not treat sadness as an untouchable idol, nor imagine that dignity lies only in silence. Write your own “sad songs” in life—whether through words, reflection, or simple laughter at your own troubles. To do so is not to belittle your pain but to transcend it.

So let Teddy Thompson’s words be a guiding light: embrace the sad songs, embrace the maudlin humor, embrace the self-deprecation that makes sorrow human. For in this lies a deeper wisdom—that life’s tragedies can be endured not only with tears, but also with laughter, and that a heart that can sing through its own grief is a heart that will never be broken completely. This, above all, is the music of resilience, the song of endurance that carries us through the darkest of nights.