Human Sadness is the first single from the debut album Tyranny by the American rock band Julian Casablancas + The Voidz, released on September 2, 2014 via Casablancas' indie record label Cult Records. The song is eleven minutes long.

The inception of the song began with drummer Alex Carapetis bringing a sample of Mozart's Requiem in D Minor to Casablancas attention and was used as a starting base to the song. The initial lyrics of the song "Put money in my hand and I will do the things you want me to" allude to Tyranny's themes of greed and corruption while the rest of the song examines Casablancas relationship with his estranged father John Casablancas who died in 2013 from cancer.

"Human Sadness" has been described as "a structure-less beast that features everything from jarring noise and warped, processed vocals to bombastic stadium rock solos and a hint of the gritty NYC punk Casablancas is best known for." It has also been compared to the Sufjan Stevens album The Age of Adz.

The music video for Human Sadness was released on May 27, 2015. The video was co-directed by Warren Fu, Nicholaus Goossen, and Wissa. The story of the video was conceived by Casablancas, Fu, and bassist Jake Bercovici and explores several storylines of human sorrow and anguish, portrayed by each member of the band juxtaposed against footage of the band playing as the apocalypse occurs on Earth. The video was inspired by the story of "the band that played on" on the Titanic as the ship sank. The end credits feature the demo of Human Sadness that Casablancas composed for the 2012 short film "The Unseen Beauty", a profile on Casablancas' step-father and artistic mentor Sam Adoquei. The music video took over a year to complete.

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Wikipedia