History StepfordSmiler / Music

* [[Music/{{Sia}}]]'s "Chandelier" is about a party girl who turns to a night of drunken debauchery to try and push down a gnawing sense of fear and distress.

Your life's a mess, you've been cut adrift''

* ''EmilieAutumn'': Compared to her other, much deeper songs about sadness/depression, "Willow" can come off as this.

* "Apple Pie" by the BastardFairies is very unsympathetic look at one of these.

* Marina and the Diamond's "Teen Idle" manages to do this with just one line:

* "Don't Let It Show" by Music/TheAlanParsonsProject.

* "Don't Let It Show" by Music/TheAlanParsonProject.

-->And make out I smile though I wear a frown

* [[WildArms4 "On the outside they would smile, laughing, joking all the while; On the inside, they would cry, painful truth they try to hide."]]

* Charlie Chaplin's ''Smile'':

--> Inside my heart is breaking
--> My make-up may be flaking
--> But my smile still stays on.
* The Simon and Garfunkel song "Richard Cory," based on the Edward Arlington Robinson poem. The song's chorus, an EveryMan wishing he could be Richard Cory, becomes ironic when repeated one final time after we learn about Cory's suicidal depression.

* Siouxsie and the Banshees' ''Happy House''.

* Paramore's ''Brick by boring brick'' has shades of this;
** '' "Well you built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic."''
* The most famous example is probably Charlie Chaplin's ''Smile''
** '' "Smile, though your heart is aching...Smile, even though it's breaking..." ''
* Music/TheKinks 'I'm Not Like Everybody Else":
--> And make out I smile though I wear a frown

* Marina and the Diamond's Teen Idle manages to do this with just one line:
-->(cheering) Feeling super! Super! Super... [[spoiler: suicidal...]]

* Facade by Music/{{Disturbed}}.

* Morrissey (in his solo career after Music/TheSmiths) has When I Last Spoke To Carol, where she said:
-->"I've hammered a smile across this pasty face of mine
--> since the day I was born in 1975."
* Everclear's ''Wonderful'' hints at this.
* The song 'Ah, but Underneath' from 'Follies.' The entire song sings about a woman who seemed to be something on the surface, but was something different underneath the top layer. But that layer, too, was 'just a shell,' and so it continues. The very last line is 'Sometimes when the wrappings fall, there's nothing underneath at all!' making this a type B.

-->"And no one knows
--> That you cry, but you don't tell anyone
--> That you
--> Might not be the golden one
--> And you're tied together with a smile
--> But you're comin' undone"

--> "Smiling faces sometimes
--> Pretend to be your friend
--> Smiling faces show no traces
--> Of the evil that lurks within..."

-->"Buried deep as you can dig inside yourself, hidden in the public eye
--> such a stellar monument to loneliness.
--> Laced with brilliant smiles and shining eyes,
--> perfect makeup, but you're barely scraping by.
* Music/LadyGaga's "Dance in the Dark" is surprisingly dark. "Baby loves to dance in the dark / cuz when he's looking she falls apart".
** "So Happy I Could Die." "I do my hair / I gloss my eyes / I touch myself all through the night."
* Lucky by Music/BritneySpears, the video shows it perfectly!
* The song [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl_QbG5RTPg&feature=channel_video_title Eight Hundred]] by Pinocchio-P.

** ''Marry Me'' can be interpreted this way: not only [[LyricalDissonance is it a terribly depressing song sung to the tune of a cheery waltz]], but the narrator seems to be trying to ''convince herself'' that's she happy, despite being trapped in a loveless arranged marriage and relying on alcohol and a lover.

* Music/TheBeatles I'm A Loser," mostly written by Lennon:

** '' "Smile, though your heart is aching...Smile, even though it's breaking..." ''

** ''Well you built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic.''

* Go relisten to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby [=McFerrin=]. That bouncy, happy a cappella track [[LyricalDissonance hides one grim song]].

* Go relisten to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. That is one grim song.

* [[WildArms4 "On the outside they would smile, laughing, joking all the while; On the inside, they would cry, painful truth they try to hide."]]

* "Go Away" by Delain is a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to a Type A, a person who puts all their effort into putting on an act instead of solving their problems.

* "The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles:
-->So take a good look at my face\\
You'll see my smile looks out of place\\
If you look closer, it's easy to trace\\
The tracks of my tears
** Smokey Robinson also had "Tears of a Clown", which is similar.
-->Now if there's a smile on my face\\
It's only there trying to fool the public

* The protagonist in Music/JonathanCoulton's song "Good Morning Tucson", a morning news anchor who keeps his trademark smile going even as he's trying to get through his day's work, interviewing guests he doesn't particularly care about, and [[spoiler:''literally setting the studio on fire, watching it burn down around him'']].

-->Yet I keep my own to hide behind