Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go submit a new entry to the Roud Index.
I searched the index for songs about boredom, about listlessness, about that heavy, gray-cloud feeling. Surprisingly, there aren’t many. Folk music is full of murder, betrayal, emigration, and drowning. But pure ennui ? That’s a 20th-century luxury. Peasants in the 1800s didn’t have time for ennui—they had potatoes to dig and cows to milk.
But here’s my takeaway:
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from typing a phrase into a search bar and finding nothing. No results. Zero matches. It feels like knocking on a door in a dream—you know someone should be home, but the silence just stares back.