Song of Many Emotions

"There are so many feelings for you to know
So many feelings like colors in the rainbow."

"I laugh when I'm happy, I cry when I'm sad, to show how I'm feeling, I growl when I'm mad. I shake when I'm frightened by a nightmare that I had, but of all these feelings, winter, spring, or fall, I like laughing when I'm happy best of all."

— Ernie, Sesame Street

Many songs are about emotions. Some might be about romantic love, platonic love, sadness, anger, desire and many emotions besides, but this trope is what happens when you get a song about a whole lot of emotions. Well, three at the very least.

Maybe the song is about how the singer or the person being sung about is feeling multiple emotions at once or keeps shifting emotions (which could be because of several events that make them feel different ways happening at once, or a single complicated event that makes them feel all those emotions, or because that's just how they roll).

It could also be educational, meant to teach about the emotions it mentions, which is common in kids' works, especially if the work in question is an Edutainment Show. They'll often talk about what makes someone feel the emotions ("we're sad when someone dies, we're happy when we get ice cream, etc") or how emotions are expressed (e.g. "We laugh when we're happy, we cry when we're sad".) A common ending for the educational version is either a statement that happiness is the best/most important emotion, that all emotions are normal/acceptable, or both. Such songs tend to have generic names like "The Feelings Song" or "The Emotion Song".

The two variations can also overlap by having someone essentially have mood swings in song for educational purposes. Both versions can also be about several people feeling different emotions. The trope may also be downplayed by having the emotions be a secondary theme.

May be a List Song. Compare Colorful Song, which is this but with colors instead of emotions. Contrast Ode to Apathy.

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Examples

Fan Works

• The fan song "Emotional" for Inside Out features all five emotions (Fear, Anger, Sadness, Joy, and Disgust) from the movie.

Films — Animated

• Beauty and the Beast:
  • "Something There" is about how Belle and Beast are curious about each other, possibly starting to fall in love, but are still cautious. The servants also sing about how they're surprised that Belle and Beast might already be starting to come together.
  • Downplayed for "Be Our Guest", which mentions how Belle is scared, how the servants used to be lonely, and how they're now happy to serve her but the emotions are only a minor theme in the song.
  • "Beauty and the Beast" is about how Belle and Beast are in love, but are also surprised, confused, and a bit scared.
• Frozen:
  • In "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", Anna is confused and upset about Elsa shutting her out, happy when she hugs her parents, excited when she tries play by herself, despondent when she realizes it's not the same by herself, bored and lonely in the empty castle without a friend, and time and again, she hopefully knocks on Elsa's door. At the end of the song, when she receives the news about her parents' death and Elsa still doesn't talk to her, Anna is devastated. Elsa doesn't sing with Anna but is prominently featured in the fragment, adding her sorrow and fear to the mix.
  • "For the First Time in Forever" is shared between Anna and Elsa while the former is hopeful and excited and the latter is apprehensive and sad.
  • "Let it Go" is Elsa's Mood-Swinger song. She embraces her magic and all the emotions she has been suppressing for so long so she flips between sorrow about her isolation and having revealed her secret to people, anger at the circumstances that made her repress her powers and feelings, and joy and pride about using her magic and being finally free.
• Frozen II:
  • In "Some Things Never Change," Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Olaf express their love for each other, they are happy with what they have, a bit sad about the passing of time and apprehensive of the change they feel coming, but determined to live out their happy moments while they can.
  • "Into the Unknown" expresses Elsa's doubts and conflicting emotions: her fear of making mistakes and losing her beloved family, her annoyance and anger at the persistent voice, her longing to find out where it would take her, her sadness that she won't find that out as she refuses to follow the voice, her hope that there might be someone else like her, her sorrow and fear at the thought that she is not where she's meant to be, and her joy at the thought of following the voice into the unknown.

Live-Action TV

• One song in The Go Show has each verse go, "I'm feeling [emotion], I'm feeling [emotion], I'm feeling [emotion] and so I move like this."
• Hi-5: One song compares the colors of the rainbow to emotions.
• Sesame Street:
  • "Feelings" is about the different ways to express each emotion and is sung by Ernie to little Natasha.
  • "Feeling Good, Feeling Bad" is about Ernie and Bert keeping on changing emotions. First Ernie is happy and Bert is sad, then Bert becomes angry, then cheers up but Ernie is sad, then angry, then both are happy.
  • "Big Feelings" is about the emotions Abby has about her parents' divorce. It mentions sadness, anger, and fear.
  • Downplayed for "Happy and Proud" which is about emotions felt on a birthday that are all variations on happiness: love, pride, and generic happiness. It also mentions sleepiness at bedtime, but that's not really an emotion.
  • In "Felines", a mouse observes four cats each having a different emotion and sings about how the cats are feeling.
  • "The Island of Emotion" is about an island where different areas are designated for every emotion: Happy Harbor, Weeping River (sadness), Love Lagoon, and the Woods of Yow (surprise).
  • In "I'm Sad Because I'm Happy", Oscar sings that he has three emotions (sad, happy, and mad) because of the other one.
  • "A Song About Emotions" is about how the singer expresses all of his emotions.
• Tikkabilla has a song about feelings. Each verse goes something along the lines of "When I'm [emotion], here's what I do: I [do this action], you do it too. Show you're [emotion], and [verb] along with me, we're [emotion], you and me!"
• Walt Disney Presents: The first color episode, "An Adventure in Color" has Ludwig Von Drake singing the "Green with Envy Blues".
  Orange, you've gotta squeeze me
  'Neath the mellow yellow moon
  So I can lose those green with envy, red with anger, purple-passionate blues

Music

• As the title indicates, the Jazz standard "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey recounts the many conflicted emotions of a romantic love affair.
  I'm wild again, beguiled again
  A simpering, whimpering child again
  Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
• The kids' song Emotions personifies emotions as faces named Mr. Happy, Mr. Sad, Mr. Greedy, and Mr. Angry.
• Zigzagged for the song If You're Happy and You Know It. Most versions only reference happiness, but a few add extra verses such as "If You're Sad and You Know It".
• "Euphoria" by Lord of the Lost is a Grief Song directed at someone for whom the narrator has conflicting feelings: love and hate and envy and regret and devotion.
• Children's songwriter Patty Shukla wrote a song called "Feelings; Emotions Song," which is asks the viewer if they're feeling a host of emotions.
• "All for You" by Red is fury mixed with pain, and the narrator is relieved that he's is no longer afraid of the one who has been hurting him.
• The Songdrops song "The Love Bug" parodies cliches about the effects of being in love by treating them like the symptoms of being bitten by a bug. Some of these are emotions (it can make you scared, it can knock you down so low or it can lift you up so high, it can make you shy, etc).
• Taylor Swift:
  • "Red" describes her many feelings as colors.
    Losing him was blue like I'd never known
    Missing him was dark grey all alone
    Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met
    But loving him was red
  • In "All Too Well," she is hurt ("Hey, you call me up again just to break me like a promise"), doubtful and somewhat regretful ("Well, maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much"), angry at her ex ("But maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up") and at the same time, she reminisces about the happiness they have lost.
  • "22". While it's mostly a feel-good song in itself, it mentions reveling in mixed emotions:
    We're happy, free, confused and lonely in the best way
    It's miserable and magical, oh yeah
• Avril Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" is a sad and angry Break-Up Song with a bit of love nostalgia thrown in.

Web Original

• Fun Kids has a song about what people do when they're feeling different emotions.
• The Youtube kids' channel (although it's thankfully not that kind of Youtube Kids Channel) Kids TV, 1 2 3 has a song called The Feelings Song, which lists emotions (happy, sad, angry/mad, excited, and scared) but it also lists physical feelings (hungry, thirsty, sick, and tired). Another online video with a song of the same name talks about feeling happy, sad, excited, angry, worried/nervous, surprised, thankful, embarrassed, lonely, silly, and proud.

Western Animation

• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood has "So Many Feelings," which details happiness, sadness, disappointment, anger, and excitement and encourages the listener to think about someone else's feelings as well.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: “This Is How I Feel”, from “Phantom Of The Jam”. It’s (well, it and the live action segments) pretty much the only manifestation of the fact that that episode’s “educational“ topic is supposed to be “expressing emotions through music”.

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