Super High-School Level Hope

Just today I finished reading a Let's Play for this game called Dangan Ronpa. The reason I was reading a Let's Play (which in this case was basically a guy translating the text and providing pictures as things in the game happened) is because the game was only ever released in Japanese. Anyway that's entirely unimportant for the purposes of this post. The general theme of the game is the conflict between Despair and Hope - the antagonist is constantly trying to sink the characters into despair, while the protagonist is the essence of Hope - in the jargon of the game, he is Super High-School Level Hope.

So this post is basically based on that. In the most concrete terms available, this playlist is songs for fighting despair with hope. So without further ado, here's my playlist:

1. Times of Trouble - Temple of the Dog: I decided to start with a song that falls a little more on the despair side of things than hope. "Times of Trouble" is undoubtedly a pretty despairing song - I listen to it frequently when I'm feeling absolutely hopeless about something and just need to release some raw emotion. Nonetheless, there's some real elements of hope here - probably the reason I listen to it in those moments, and always feel better afterwards.
2. I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor: This is, without a doubt, the quintessential song about climbing out of despair with hope. Gaynor creates a pretty well-contained narrative here, establishing the cause of her despair as well as her process for arriving at hope - simple determination that she will survive. One might say that there's barely anything more to hope than this. We might try to convince ourselves or others that there's a factual basis to hope, but at the end of the day hope is something of a blind faith in the prospect of surviving.
3. We Don't Care - Kanye West: I really wanted to include a hip hop song in this playlist, to diversify the music types a bit and represent my own tastes a little better. I eventually decided on this song by Kanye (one of my all-time favorite rappers.) A lot of Kanye's work on his first album deals with the false promises of education. This song, leading the album, breaks that generally bitter tone a little bit: rather than simply decry how little others have done for him, Kanye hails the power of fighting expectations to the death, of not caring about the expectations set for you and reaching for success no matter what. The message of climbing out of despair, no matter whether others believe in you, resonates very strongly with the theme of this playlist.
4. Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra: "Mr. Blue Sky" is usually used as just an exceedingly good example of a "happy" song. However, within the context of the album (or, specifically, side 3 of Out of the Blue) "Mr. Blue Sky" is the final stage in a sage which includes many episodes of despair. The songs represent a journey from despair into hope, represented consistently by weather terminology, and this song is the culmination of all that - the inevitable return of the sun. The song contains lyrics referencing how long the sun had been gone, but spends most of its time unabashedly ecstatic over the sun's return. This is, without a doubt, the perfect representation of the rewards Hope can reap for us if we allow it to triumph over Despair.
5. Three Little Birds - Bob Marley & The Wailers: And finally, a sort of thesis or final reminder. We're all familiar with the delightfully simple chorus lyrics: "Dont worry about a thing/cause every little thing gonna be all right." In typical Marley fashion, it's a deceptively simple mantra: easy to understand, difficult to remember. But perhaps if we just remember those few lines every day, give ourselves our own three little birds, we'll find ourselves immune to Despair.