Fashion
15 Sadcore Albums to Get You Through the Fall
As this scorching summer nears its end and fall’s shortening days and cooling breezes follow closely behind, musical playlists will also shift from sweaty dance hits and catchy pop anthems to moodier, more autumnal fare. Forget ‘sad-girl summer’: autumn is the perfect seasonal backdrop for sadcore music.
‘Sadcore’ was first coined in the 1980s to describe the young musicians who were turning away from the aggressive sounds of punk and hardcore and embracing melancholic lyrics, bittersweet melodies and more structured and ethereal atmospheres. Labels such as 4AD, Postcard Records, Sarah Records, Creation Records, K Records and others were often associated with this style. Although sadcore was usually characterized by a particular guitar-based aesthetic, the term later became an umbrella term encompassing several subgenres and subscenes, including dream pop, twee pop, shoegaze, folktronica, slowcore, chillwave, ambient pop, and chamber music. pop. What all these styles had in common was an emotional sound best suited to introspective listening through headphones, encouraging daydreaming or nostalgic remembrance, dancing alone in the dark or lingering in bed.
Since 2020, sadcore playlists and mixtapes have become extremely popular among Generation Z, exploding on platforms and sites like Spotify and YouTube. Many are intricately composed and include both professional songs and songs created by anonymous bedside musicians, or others remixed with tags like ‘slowed and reverbed’ (also known as daycore), ‘super slowed’ and ‘corecore’, or songs that play on a loop for hours stand for maximum hypnotic effect.
This year, a range of new and established musicians have released poignant works that celebrate life’s sad melodies. Here, Fashion has compiled a list of some of the best and most promising of these albums. Together, their oneiric and desolate sounds provide the perfect weepy soundtrack for the autumn days ahead.
