This is the song the public protector's probably playing in her car right now

Dirty dishes in the sink mmm mmm mmm

Lots of time for me to think …

Walked the dogs all by myself, I go to bed but I can't sleep

I'm so depressed, I can't even eat.

These are the lyrics of a song by The Manhattans that came out of my car stereo as I drove home from Harrismith last Sunday.

About 30 seconds into the song, tears started to well up in my eyes. I struggled to control the urge to sommer drive into an oncoming Freightliner Argosy 18-wheeler. Then I thought, maybe I should just call her and tell her to come back home. This is when I heard Louis Gossett jnr's voice in those brilliant Windhoek Lager ads in my head: "What are you doing, Stupid? Your wife has not left you. She's waiting for you at home!"

Louis was right. My missus has not left me at all. In fact, by the time you read this, we will have reached the 15-years-of-marriage milestone. (Let me pause here for applause.)

The reason I'm sharing this embarrassing moment is to point out the corrosive effect of depressing songs on the psyche. And man, songwriters are a bottomless pit of melancholy.

I remember watching The Bodyguard at the then Sanlam Centre in Pinetown, circa 1992, feeling really sad all of a sudden. Not because a bunch of ignorant teenagers were throwing popcorn at me. It's because in this particular scene, Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston were slow dancing to Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You.

I think Costner must have read my mind because at some point he sniggers and says something like, "Damn, this is a depressing song."  I nodded sagely and removed popcorn from my hair.

About two years ago a friend and I were booked in at the Ilawu Lodge in Newcastle for the weekend. Let's call him Ndabezitha because that's a good name for a crybaby. Around 6.30am I was woken up by a song blaring from his Mazda SUV, on repeat. Dogs in the neighbourhood were starting to howl to the melody. After about the fifth time the song played, I lost my cool and stepped outside to tell him to stop the torture.

That's when I was accosted by the sight of Ndabezitha in the driver's seat, head thrown back, singing along to Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross's rendition of Endless Love with tears gushing out of his eyes faster than the Victoria Falls. To save both of us the embarrassment, I tiptoed back into my room and went back to nursing my hangover with headphones on.

Later that day while enjoying some spicy short rib at a shisanyama, I gently inquired about the source of the waterworks and discovered that Carey had been his late mother's favourite artist. Say no more, young man. Say no more.

I'm not sharing this story to ridicule my friend. I've experienced similar episodes. We recently hosted Marc Lottering on Uncaptured, the Kaya FM drive-time show. He selected Stevie Wonder's Lately as his signature tune that afternoon. I couldn't resist telling him about the time I was driving back from doing an evening talk show, some years back, and that song came on. There is a part of the song that goes:

But what I really feel my eyes won't let me hide

'Cause they always start to cry

'Cause this time could mean goodbye ...

It is then that I realised that my eyes were swimming in salty liquid, and I parked the car and allowed them to perform a re-enactment of the Albert Falls. The peculiar thing is that I was not going through any emotional turmoil at all, nor could I pinpoint a previous trauma to explain myself. I am convinced that the culprit is nothing more than the song itself.

It's not Sunday music, it's Suicinday music

I will tell you which song has made me park by the side of the road to weep for a clear reason. My maternal grandmother, Margaret Gwala (née Kinloch) had roots in Edinburgh, Scotland. She often told me how much she would love to visit the place. I quietly resolved that I would fly her there. She passed on, in 1998, before I could fulfil the promise. So when I found myself in a car listening to Jamie Foxx sing I Wish (you were here), I couldn't stop the waterfalls.

I'm not sharing these stories to catapult you, dear reader, into the depths of melancholy. After all, I'm not a Sunday radio music compiler. Or, as a friend once quipped, "It's not Sunday music, it's Suicinday music".

I'm writing this to make everyone feel better about the not-so-happy music we all indulge in from time to time. We all go through patches of our existence where we're feeling blue, to quote Phil Collins.

To quote my colleague David O'Sullivan, sometimes we select music "matching the mood" we're in. It wouldn't surprise me if I discovered that our beleaguered public protector's favourite song right now is Jennifer Hudson's I'm Telling You from the Dreamgirls soundtrack. I can picture her in her car yelling:

I'm staying, I'm staying

And you, and you, you're gonna love me

Oh, you're gonna love me