10 Pop Songs That Are Actually Incredibly Dark

The whole premise behind pop music comes from just how wholesome it can be. Even though rock might be have its more rebellious undercurrents and hip hop talks about the living felt at street level, the Top 40 brand of music is reserved for the more sunny side of life, where there are no problems to be had anywhere. As all of us know though, life in the sunshine is not always how life works.

Some of the best music is based on heartache in some capacity, and some of the biggest songs on the charts have got there just for how twisted they actually are. From dealing with drug dependency to actual crimes being committed in the song, these stories aren't really for the faint of heart, as most of the characters in these songs either end up dead or pretty broken by the end of things, whether that's emotionally or physically.

If you think that it's bad enough hearing these true meanings now, you can just imagine how it felt back when they were released, sharing the same presence as the Mariah Careys of the world and getting people to sing along with some of the darkest lyrics imaginable. There might be a certain talent that comes with writing a great melody, but that power can be used for evil if you slip something else into the mix.

No one who was coming to Blink-182 in the late '90s was really thinking about going into deep subject matter or anything. These were the guys who's calling card up to this point was a song that was making fun of other stars on MTV and a video where they were running naked through the streets of California. These guys weren't trying to be Radiohead levels of deep or anything, but Mark Hoppus definitely had a morbid streak with the song Adam's Song.

Since most of the band's fanbase was adolescent, hearing a song like this was definitely a change of pace, talking about a kid that Mark had read about who had decided to take his own life. While most of the song takes on the perspective of this kid trying to make all of his inner pain go away, Mark actually sprinkled in a bit of his own experiences in here as well, talking about how lonely he felt on tour and yearning to just get back home to do absolutely nothing.

There's a lot of despair in a song like this, but Mark ends up turning the whole thing into a positive by the end, saying that all of that pain and torment makes you appreciate the good times that much more, when you can't wait to get back outside into the world. For all of the positive messages, Mark was still always standoffish towards the song, saying that it was too personal and not playing it live all that much after the initial tour. This might have just been one morbid song on a fun album, but that was the exception. It's going to get much more intense from here.