5 rock albums about psychological disorders

A review of several rock classics that express situations associated with various disorders.

Artistic manifestations generally have a communicative function towards a receiving audience. Normally, the content to be communicated are emotions, ideas, thoughts... that is, aspects of human behavior related to psychology.

But to make matters worse, there are several films, theatrical performances or novels that not only convey this content, but also have a narrative based purely on some psychological disorder or phenomenon. Examples of this would be the movie "Best Impossible" (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) or the classic "Don Quixote of La Mancha", in which a delusional disorder symbolized idealism.

However, other artistic disciplines have also used this resource, perhaps in a more subtle and less popular way, such as painting or music. Below we review several great musical great musical works of the 20th century whose main narrative focuses on psychological aspects..

Rock 'n' Roll Classics on Psychology and Mental Disorders

These are several rock albums characterized by talking about different dimensions of mental disorders.

1. The Kinks - Soap Opera

The Kinks were already well versed in concept albums by the time they released Soap Opera, whose main theme would be the everyday, expressed through the experiment perpetrated by the protagonist of the story, the fictional rock star Starmaker, who, looking for inspiration for an album, changed his life with Norman, a citizen, a priori, completely normal.

The album narrates an everyday day in Norman's life, and how Starmaker has to adapt to this new situation. However, in his penultimate theme we discover that both were the same person, having been all a delirium of Norman provoked by the disenchantment with his routine and boring life, being Starmaker an alternative personality created by himself.

2. Lou Reed - Berlin

The dark album of a promising Lou Reed focused on the relationship of Jim and Caroline, two junkies who "tried" to develop a couple relationship. The drug use and the violent relationship between the two led Caroline to sink into a deep depression and to into a deep depression and a strong sense of learned helplessness, which would eventually lead to suicide.which would eventually lead her to suicide. In a plot premise as extreme as the one presented by Reed, it is easy to detect other mental health disorders such as borderline disorder, intermittent explosive disorder...

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3. The Who - Tommy

The Who's classic album, which has its film adaptation, tells the story of its eponymous protagonist: Tommy, a boy who, after accidentally witnessing the murder of his mother's lover at the hands of his father, who miraculously returned alive from the war, was left deaf, blind and mute, because his parents insisted that he had seen nothing, heard nothing, and would never say anything. A poetic and interesting reading of post-traumatic stress.as well as the power of suggestion, especially in children.

Speaking of The Who, it is inevitable in this regard to comment on their other famous Rock Opera, Quadrophenia, in which it is established that the protagonist has four personalities. However, this is only a figure to represent the different behavioral tendencies of the protagonist in different contexts, and not a mental disorder per se.

4. Pink Floyd - The Wall

One of the most memorable works of Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, also called "The Wall" in English. It is the biography of a fictitious rock star, who loses his father in the war, suffers the overprotection of his mother, the harassment of his teachers, love disappointments... each of these stressful events is another brick in a metaphorical wall, which rises between him and the rest of the people, leading him to isolation, drug addiction and to which could be categorized as an example of schizotypal personality disorder..

5. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

Although the album is not structured in such a way that all the tracks build a single narrative, the masterpiece of the late Amy Winehouse continually resorts to the same themes in most of its tracks. As a visibly autobiographical contribution, Winehouse portrays us the sensations of a convinced addict, with occasional bouts of anger and passive aggressiveness (As in Rehab or Addicted) or toxic relationships and calls for attention typical of borderline personality disorder (Back to Black, You Know That (Back to Black, You Know That I'm not Good, Me and Mr. Jones).