This morning for no reason I started thinking about a certain subset of recordings that I’ve always been partial to. I call it Though The World Falls Apart Music. But this gives the impression that it’s a recognized genre that I became attracted to. In truth, however, I only saw the commonality of these albums after the fact, and I only gave it a name once I was aware of the significance of my curation.

Though The World Falls Apart Music mostly emerges from the stressful circumstances surrounding its recording. The most obvious examples are The Wind and Blackstar, the self-consciously final albums of Warren Zevon and David Bowie. But many other cohesive collections have emerged from less dramatic but equally troubling periods of artists’ lives. A partial list includes in no particular order: Blue Moves (Elton John), Berlin (Lou Reed), Oar (Skip Spence), Third/Sister Lovers (Big Star), Mona Lisa Overdrive (Trashmonk), Over (Peter Hammill) The Bride Stripped Bare (Bryan Ferry), Blemish (David Sylvian), World Without Tears (Lucinda Williams), No Song No Spell No Madrigal (The Apartments), Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan), Kelvingrove Baby (The Bathers), Music In A Foreign Language (Lloyd Cole), Mid Air (Paul Buchanan), The Yard Went On Forever (Jimmy Webb via Richard Harris) and Music For A New Society (John Cale).

The through lines of Though Things Fall Apart Music is the urgency and focus that the not-optimal periods of the artists’ lives imposed on their respective recordings. These albums are not simplistic “sad geezer” soundtracks. The grief or issues that the artists were going through varied wildly—as did their musical responses. But in almost all instances, there is both a cohesiveness and concision to the releases—their scope is narrow and there’s no fat on them. Though The World Falls Apart collections are like athletes: specialized for a specific event and taken down to bone, sinew and muscle.

I think I found myself in this alley of pop music because I was attracted to the emotional intensity of the music. Particularly as the recording industry matured and became progressively formulaic and commodified, the strength and integrity of Though The Falls Apart releases have grown, much as a half-submerged outcropping looms larger as the tide goes out. As pop increasingly plays it safe and predictable, the stature of these off-road explorations of grief, despair and even doom are more attractive to me than ever.