Anthony and Stoudemire, who hyped their partnership as vital to the franchise, too often look like one of those melancholy couples you see pushing though dinner, engaging little, too polite to confront what's wrong.

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Instead, it slowly piles on all the melancholy the song can bear, one subtly tear-jerking ingredient at a time.

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Heavy organic drums, soul samples bursting with horns, and pitched-shifted vocals tend to convey one of two moods: anthemic triumph or bittersweet melancholy.

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One likely reason for the book's staying power is that melancholy was merely a springboard for whatever else struck Mr. Burton's fancy.

WSJ: Robert Burton | The Anatomy of Melancholy | Digressions on a Diagnosis | Masterpiece by Danny Heitman

One would be privy to accounts of fear, guilt, rage, melancholy, unrequited love and infidelity that would generate an impression of our collective insanity and endearing fragility.

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Still, they convert those sounds into one that's both new and familiar, making uplifting music that still feels melancholy.

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But the problem of chronic sadness is an old one, as we're reminded within the pages of Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" first published in 1621 and still in print nearly four centuries later.

WSJ: Robert Burton | The Anatomy of Melancholy | Digressions on a Diagnosis | Masterpiece by Danny Heitman